Death's Apprentice
by Sockmonkey406
Summary: Thanatos didn't mean to take on an apprentice, but somehow he ended up with one anyway. Now he just wants to help his new apprentice survive the road ahead, but she seems more intent on taking over the world-and more importantly, its coffee supply. Rated T for safety.
1. Prologue: How I Met Your (Great) Grandma

**Hey, everyone! This is the first chapter of my brainchild: a Harry Potter/Heroes of Olympus crossover. It's enormous, and I've been working on it for a few years now, so it's pretty well thought-out. It's not totally written after a certain point a few chapters in, but don't worry about me abandoning it—I've spent three years working on this already, so what's another few? It's not huge on romance (the only romance is a side plot), but it's about friendship, family, and everything in between.** _ **Death's Apprentice**_ **has Greek, Roman, and Celtic mythology mixed in with the Harry Potter-verse, but I've done pretty heavy research on all of it. That said, mythology is convoluted and contradicting on the best of days, so your version may be different from mine. Nonetheless, let me know if you have any issues with what I've written! And with that, I hope you all enjoy the story!**

I never wanted an apprentice.

Really, it never made sense to have one. I'm immortal, after all; what's the point of training someone to take your place if you never intend to step down? Besides, I've always been quite capable of handling my job on my own, so it wasn't like I needed the help. My job pays well, has plenty of benefits, and happens to come with a lovely office and a nifty little coffee machine that I didn't fancy sharing with anyone.

Was I lonely? I suppose so. Frankly, one doesn't realize that they're lacking in something until they've had it, and I'd never had companionship, so how was I to know that I longed for it? And anyway, having an apprentice wasn't exactly "companionship," in my mind.

How was I to know that the teacher could become the taught, that a master and apprentice would become more like family than coworkers? How could I have known that "Master Thanatos" could become "Uncle Death," or that an apprentice could turn into the closest thing I had to a daughter?

Well, I couldn't, and I didn't. And it took a while for me to realize what a beautiful gift I had been given, in the form of freckles, electricity, and a love for coffee that matches even mine.

As for my favorite apprentice-here is your story (our story!), and it all begins with this chapter:

 _How I Met Your (Great) Grandmother. Again._

It was supposed to be a normal day.

Granted, a normal day for me is usually started with coffee and ended with paperwork, so the fact that Lord Pluto sent me out of the Underworld in the first place was already out of the ordinary. Still, by all rights it should have been straightforward: I simply needed to corral the souls of a young family who had been murdered by some sort of mortal serial killer-Voldemort, he had called himself. Usually I'd send my Dementors to collect their souls, or sometimes Hermes, but I was curious how three murder victims fell into my sphere of "peaceful death."

So I went to their dying place and quickly discovered that the household of the murder victims simply didn't exist. At least, it didn't appear to, since it was coated in an extremely dense layer of Mist and something that inexplicably reminded me of the goddess Hecate (or Trivia, if you're one of those Roman purists). However, I'm not a god for nothing, so I was able to at least find and enter the house after five or so minutes of intense squinting.

The moment I stepped in the door, the stench of death hit me. Not a mortal's death, although that was present as well, this being the site of a murder and all. No, this was the smell of an entity of death, a god or goddess or someone of that nature. Being the ever-intelligent and sharp-witted god that I am, I figured that I had farted without realizing it. After all, what reason would entice a different death deity have to enter a house in the domain of Pluto?

The answer was, as it usually turns out to be, love and a deep-rooted desire to piss Jupiter off.

The first corpse I discovered was that of a young man, likely around twenty-one, with wide eyes frozen in place and no mark upon his body. His ghost was sitting on top of the body, unruly hair and glasses askew as they would have been in real life.

"Hello," I said to him. It wasn't polite to speak ill of the dead, and it wasn't polite to speak ill to the dead, so manners it was. "Might I ask your name?"

The man looked startled. "James," he said. "James Potter."

"Fine name, that," I said approvingly, shaking his hand. "I am Thanatos. If you don't mind me asking, how did you die?"

James sighed, pushing his ghostly glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Voldemort," he said bitterly. "Our Secret Keeper betrayed us, and I didn't have my wand on me."

I froze. Wand-wielders, huh? Hadn't seen those in a while. I'd heard rumors of a Killing Curse that could kill someone instantly and painlessly, which was likely why I'd been summoned rather than my more violent counterpart. Still, wand-wielders usually fell into the Celtic sphere, not the Greek or Roman, so why was I here instead of the Triple Goddess?

I shook myself, forcing a smile on my face. "Well, James," I said jovially, "looks like your time in this world is up. I'm going to take you down to the Underworld now, if you'll allow it."

I'd take him down to the Underworld whether he allowed it or not, but for some reason, pretending like mortals had a choice aided the transition.

James nodded slowly, though he looked somewhat terrified. "What about my wife and daughter?" he asked hesitantly. "You're not taking them, are you?"

There were other dead souls in this house, I knew, but I wasn't going to tell that to a dead man. "At the moment, in here for you, James," I said in the kindest voice I could muster, which is not very. I did try, though, and that's what's important.

He seemed to accept that, and I pulled him into the bag of souls I carried on my belt.

The other souls were upstairs, so I let my feet leisurely stroll up the hardwood steps. Cheerful pictures hung on the wall, most with three main figures: James, a lovely woman with dark red hair who I presumed was his wife, and a tiny baby with bright red hair and startlingly familiar blue eyes.

The door at the end of the hall was cracked open, and I saw shadows flickering in the dim light, which was odd, as it was only seven or so in the evening and shouldn't have been that dark. I merely added it to my list of "strange but relatively unworrisome" facets of this particular field trip.

I slowly pushed the door open and scanned the room. It seemed to be a nursery, with colorful wallpaper and stuffed animals in a small stack near a wooden crib. It would have been quite homey had the dead body of the woman from the pictures not been collapsed in front of the crib.

"Afternoon," said the woman's ghost irritably. Her eyes were a piercing green, and to be perfectly honest, they felt a bit uncomfortable, as if they could see straight through my mortal guise to the skull face underneath. She was also at least four months pregnant. "I suppose you're Thanatos, then."

Odd that the woman should be familiar with my name. Actually, I was a little flattered. "That would be me, yes."

"Well," she said dryly, "if you're here for my soul, I'm afraid you're going to have to fight my grandmother for it."

I shifted. "I don't understand-"

A sword materialized at my throat and hot breath washed over my neck. "Hello, Thanatos," said a raspy, though clearly feminine, voice. "Miss me?"

Time slowed to a stop. I knew this voice as well as I knew how to operate my coffee maker: _The Morrigan,_ one of the most powerful Celtic deities, perhaps seconded only by the goddess Brigid, and a death goddess, to boot.

"Hi, sweetheart," I said.

Oh, and she was also my on-and-off girlfriend for the last few centuries.

"Don't sweetheart me, Mister," she snarled, digging the sword into my neck.

I licked my lips nervously. "So what brings you to my crime scene, milady?"

"Family," said the Morrigan, almost immediately. "As it usually is."

"That right?" _I screwed up, I screwed up, I screwed up…_ "Could you maybe remove your sword and we can talk this over like men-pardon me, women?"

She seemed to consider it. I felt, rather than saw, her head tilting to the side in thought, followed by a deep sigh. "Why not?" she said tiredly, letting her sword arm drop.

Movements from then on had to be slow, cautious. The Morrigan was far more powerful than I, even though the Celts had lost much of their power as the Greeks and Romans gained theirs. I turned to face her carefully, hands held up in a gesture of surrender.

The Morrigan was, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on, and I knew the goddess Venus. It may be that my infatuation was caused by her being a death deity and not a love goddess, or it could have been that if I didn't think she was gorgeous, she'd have murdered me two hundred years ago, but none of that stopped her from being extremely hot. Physically, she resembled James Potter's wife closely. They had the same dark red hair and intense green eyes, but the Morrigan seemed...wilder. Her hair was loose and tangled, her posture proud and unyielding, and her eyes seemed sharp enough to cut diamond without gaining a scratch.

"So let's talk," she said, leaning in threateningly. Her breath smelled of blood and carrion.

It was intoxicating.

"Thanks for not killing him, Grandmother," said the woman's ghost. "I don't really want Addie to see you lop off someone's head."

The Morrigan snorted. "She'll see it once she gets a little older, anyways, Lily darling."

So the woman's name was Lily, and the Morrigan was her grandmother. Interesting. So then why was a Greek and Roman god of death summoned, when it was quite clear that this family was under the domain of the Morrigan?

"I'm assuming you're wondering why you were called here," said the Morrigan, interrupting my thoughts.

"It had crossed my mind."

The Morrigan jerked her head towards the crib. "Go take a look," she said bitterly. "But if you make any kind of move-"

"I won't, I swear!" I protested, carefully weaving my way around Lily Potter's corpse to peer into the crib. Inside it was the baby from the photos in all her red-head glory, but it was her eyes that stood out the most. They were the same shade of blue as in the pictures, but in person it was much clearer why they had seemed so familiar. Her eyes were the brightest and most vibrant shade of blue imaginable. One might even go so far to suggest that they were _electric blue_.

"I see Jupiter has been busy," I commented, rubbing the crease between my eyebrows.

"In my defense," said Lily, "I honestly didn't expect the baby owl to turn into a Roman god. And Jupiter was _really_ flexible-"

I yelped and covered my ears. "Yeah, I don't want to know how the man upstairs is in bed, thanks!" I said hastily. "And what about your husband, James?"

Lily shrugged. "We weren't even dating at that point. We only started going out after Addie was born."

"I...see," I said finally, feeling a new respect for James. It takes a special kind of man to date a woman with a young child, especially when said child was the daughter of an extraordinarily powerful and terrifying Celtic legacy-oh, and Jupiter, too.

"So what now?" Lily asked, folding her ghostly arms and leaning back against the baby's crib.

"Now I take your family's souls to the Underworld-"

"Not happening," said the Morrigan. "I'll take them to the Otherworld."

"The baby's a daughter of Jupiter," I said. "Underworld."

"Addie's a great-granddaughter of the Morrigan," she argued. "Otherworld."

"Daughter is closer than great-granddaughter. And I've already got James."

"Keep him. I'm taking Lily and Addison."

"Pluto, no," Lily said, having been relatively quiet for a few minutes. "I'm going where James is. And Addie's not dead."

I glanced back at the red-headed baby and examined her "death aura," as I like to call it. She was right; Addison wasn't completely dead. "She is mostly," I said.

"Mostly dead isn't dead," Lily pointed out triumphantly. "Just almost."

I hated it when dead people were smart. "Well, she's dead enough to take to the Underworld," I complained.

"She's dead enough to take to the Otherworld," replied the Morrigan.

"Gods almighty, will you stop that?" Lily said, her voice rising in frustration.

"Fine," said the Morrigan. "I'll raise her and she won't go to the Underworld or the Otherworld."

"I wouldn't trust you to raise my dog," I said instantly, "and mine's a zombie."

"Oh, like you could do better," scoffed the Morrigan.

"I bet I could," I said, puffing out my chest.

"You're on. We both raise her and see who's better at it."

"It's a bet," I said, sticking out a hand and shaking hers. We glared at each other for a minute, seeing who would blink first, before she grabbed the front of my robes and yanked me into a very long, very drawn-out snog.

"Oh my gods," said Lily in horror. "I cannot believe you two are going to be raising my baby."

We broke apart, breathing heavily. Her grin was predatory; mine was deliriously loopy.

"Wow," I said under my breath, feeling dazed. Suddenly, what I had just agreed to struck me, and I said several archaic curses involving miniature horses and Jupiter's underpants. _A baby?!_

"I have no idea what you just said," Lily muttered, "but I highly doubt it was appropriate for a one-year-old baby."

"Not really, no," I agreed, still shell-shocked.

Lily sighed. "Right," she said, "so I'm going with James to the Underworld." 

"Uh-huh."

"And you two are taking care of Addie."

"That's right," said the Morrigan unaffectedly. "And I'll train Addison, don't you worry, dear."

Lily shook her head hurriedly. "Yeah, that's not happening," she said. "Nana, no offense, but you taught me the most effective ways to murder someone when I was four, and then said you should have started earlier. I want Thanatos training Addie."

"But Thanatos is a wimp," the Morrigan complained. "He won't let her fight battles until she's at least ten!"

"That's the point, Nana."

"Ugh. Fine." The Morrigan turned to me. "Looks like you have a new apprentice, Thanatos."

"Sounds like," I said faintly.

My new apprentice cackled maniacally, then started wailing.

"First things first," Lily said. "Do either of you know how to change a diaper?"

 **Phew. Chapter 1 is up! What did you guys think? Just FYI, the Otherworld is sort of like the Celtic Underworld, although it might be closer to the afterlives of the Norse myths on Yggdrasil, and the Morrigan is the Celtic Triple Goddess of Death, and one of the major deities in the Celtic pantheon.**

 **I don't know when I'll update next: I'm still in school and have a very busy schedule. I'll try to update a few times a month, but I also have a chronic illness that acts up and causes me to miss a lot of school, so we'll see how it goes. Don't worry, though—this story is my baby and I won't be abandoning it in the foreseeable future.**

 **Next Up: Death's experiences with parenting and Addie's new friend.**


	2. Power: Murderous Tendencies

**Oh my gods, guys. I am totally blown away by your response. Thank you all so much! This chapter is longer and is pretty fluffy, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.**

 **Note: ltalicized speech in quotations means sign language. Remember, if you notice that I got something wrong, review or PM me and let me know!**

Being a god has many perks: immortality, awesome power, ambrosia. What it does not have, however, is an absence of paperwork, which meant that, in order to take on an apprentice, I had to fill out forms 3 and 7, parts a, b, c, d, and g, but not parts e and f in form 7, because apparently those were about male apprentices, not female, so instead I had to write a short essay detailing why I thought I was fit to train an apprentice.

News flash: I am not fit to train an apprentice.

Nonetheless, the Fates dictated that I must fill out the forms, and so the forms I would fill out, with only mild complaining.

I glanced at Addie, who was happily sitting in her booster seat, smashing banana pieces with her spoon. Technically, I wasn't supposed to bring work to the dinner table, but the Morrigan wasn't around to stop me, so I figured it'd be fine. "What do you think, Addison? Are you 'ethical and hard-working,' or 'ambitious and intelligent'?"

Addie blinked at me. "Murder," she said, fairly coherently for a one-year-old.

"Murder" was the only word Addie had said, and she said it a lot. Her favorite color? Murder. Which shirt did she want? Murder. Had she seen your best work tie? Murder. I wasn't entirely sure where she had learned the word; it could have been anywhere, really. From me, from the Morrigan, from the assorted crime shows and mysteries I had playing on the TV at any given moment, from that time I read _Sherlock Holmes_ to put her to sleep-who could tell? Regardless, the Morrigan and I were very proud. Well, she was; I was mildly concerned that Addie considered one word to be an acceptable answer to most debates. Of course, that still made her smarter than most politicians...

"'Ambitious and intelligent' it is," I said, jotting down her response.

"Murder," Addie said cheerfully, returning to her brutal attack on the bananas.

I pointed my pen at her. "Very true. Have I told you about the tests you have to go through as my apprentice?"

"Murder?"

I nodded gravely. "As I suspected. Well, there's three main tests, and each of them could last years at a time, maybe even decades. Since the Fates give the tests, every apprenticeship of death is slightly different, so the tests I had to take will be vastly different from yours."

Addie continued viciously demolishing her dinner.

"Right. The first test is Power, where you learn how to gain power, how to use it, and how not to let it use you. Power starts as soon as I finish this paperwork, so you'll see what I mean soon enough."

Noticing I was looking at her, Addie nodded assent and shot me a gappy smile.

"Good girl. The second test is Control, and the final test is Freedom. Most apprentices fail Power and never get to the other tests, though, so you might not make it that far. Still," I said thoughtfully, "I've got a feeling you'll get pretty far."

Addie banged her spoon against the table, flinging smashed banana everywhere. "Murder!" she shrieked, laughing with delight.

I wiped banana goop off my face. "Or maybe not."

According to the eleven and a half parenting books I had read, most babies start walking somewhere between nine and twelve months. Addison didn't take her first steps until around eighteen months, but that didn't mean she was immobile. No, instead of walking or even crawling, she just rolled everywhere, like a pudgy little tumbleweed. I figured I'd take her to gymnastics lessons when she got a bit older, but for the time being, I just tried to keep her from breaking anything of value lying around the house.

Unfortunately, the Morrigan did not share my concerns. In fact, she encouraged Addie's wrecking ball habits and left fragile objects within the reach of someone barely two feet tall. "She needs to start demolition young," the Morrigan had said proudly. "A girl can never start too early, right, Addison?"

"Murder," Addie had agreed, reaching for a shattered piece of vase.

I shot forwards and lifted her into the air and away from the littered porcelain pieces. "Morrigan, she could cut herself!"

"Then she'll have learned a valuable lesson," said the Morrigan. "Just wait until I start training her with knives."

I squeezed Addie involuntarily. "How on earth did you manage to raise your kids before this?"

"Dumped 'em with their fathers," she said promptly. "Childrearing is men's work."

 _No,_ I remember thinking. _It's just not the Morrigan's work. And thank the gods for that!_

This time, though, Addie had less to worry about from the pottery shards and more to worry about from me. Normally, she just went after whatever breakable thing was in her reach on the floor, but on this instance, she'd caught hold of a cord in the kitchen and yanked, pulling my beloved coffee machine to the tile flooring and utterly destroying it in the process.

"Addison Evans-Potter!" I shouted. My eyebrows twitched as I surveyed the coffee-soaked damage. "What have you _done?_ "

"Murder," she said innocently, dipping her fingers in the coffee and bringing them up to her mouth. She made a pleased noise as she tasted it and grinned.

"You-you-my coffee!" I sputtered.

She blinked. "Mmm."

"I've never-I can't believe you-oh, you are in so much trouble!"

Addie tilted her head, looking up at me with bright blue eyes. She smiled suddenly, reaching out her arms to me. "Uncle Death," she said clearly-her first words, after "murder."

I melted, reaching down and extricating my apprentice from the former coffee pot. "Addie, my girl, how is it that you already know how to play me like a fiddle?"

She bonked my nose. "Uncle Death," she said, laughing. "Uncle Death!"

I didn't think I'd ever get tired of hearing her say my name.

Addie's first day of preschool was difficult. Before we could drop her off, we had to go through a fair bit of screaming, bargaining, and crying, and even after all of that, the sending off was still like pulling teeth.

"Uncle, can I go now?" Addie asked, fiddling with her new backpack. At three, she spoke relatively well, though her vocabulary was limited and murder was still the most frequent word in her speech.

"Hold on," I said, blowing my nose loudly and rubbing my eyes, "Let me get a few more pictures-"

"Uncle Death, school started five minutes ago," Addie said, exasperated.

"And it can wait five more minutes!" I said. "You only start preschool once, you know."

"Thank the gods," Addie muttered, tugging on one of her orange pigtails. "Is my hair good?"

I examined the near perfect (if I do say so myself) pigtails and nodded. We'd learned relatively early that Addie was OCD, so she tended to double and triple check whatever we did. Sometimes it was better to stop her before she washed her hands until they bled, but other times it was easier to just roll with it. "They're fine."

"'Kay. Can I go?"

"Do you have your snack?"

"Uh-huh."

"Crayons?"

"Yup."

"Change of clothes?"

"Uncle, you're picking me up at lunch."

"Right," I said. Clearly, Addie was prolonging going into school. I decided to help her. "Did you pack a weapon?"

"I have a frying pan. Bye, Uncle," she said, starting to walk over to the impatiently waiting teacher.

"Wait!" I said. "Do you have-uh, do you have-"

Addie groaned. "Please go away," she complained. "You're embarrassing me."

Addison developed the teenager attitude early on, at the tender age of two and a half. I could never figure out whether I should be proud or annoyed. On one hand, there were few things as funny as a grumpy toddler; on the other hand, teenagers were _annoying._ Like, as annoying as Thor. Everyone hates Thor. Except Thor. No, never mind, Thor was much more irritating.

"Oh, just go," I said, waving her towards the woman waiting to escort her inside. "Don't talk to strangers!"

"I don't know anyone!" Addie yelled back at me. "They're all strangers!"

Toddlers these days.

The thing about mortals was that time never seemed to stop moving, so Halloween rolled around alarmingly quickly after Addie's first day of preschool. It was the anniversary of Lily and James Potter's death, but it was also Samhain, which meant the bridge between the mortal world and the world of the dead was weakened, and I could bring Lily and James to Godric's Hollow for a visit.

"How's my favorite girl?" James said cheerfully, picking Addie up and twirling her around.

Addie giggled. "I'm not dead yet."

"I can see that," said James with a smile, poking her tiny nose. "Good job."

"Thank you," she replied. "Look, Dad, I've grown a whole two inches!"

"Have you really?" James said, feigning shock. "Why, you're almost as big as me!"

Lily elbowed him. "Let me get a look at my daughter," she said good-naturedly, plucking Addie out of his arms. She took in Addie hungrily; she only got to see her daughter once a year. Her eyes narrowed. "Thanatos, what exactly is my daughter wearing?"

I gulped. Despite dealing with the scariest of the Greek and Roman pantheon on a daily basis, Lily Potter managed to be far more terrifying. "Uh," I glanced at Addie's outfit, "a shirt and pants?"

Figurative steam issued from Lily's ears. "Try a striped shirt," she said, "with _plaid_ pants."

"Um," I said intelligently, "the Morrigan did it?"

James frantically shook his head from behind Lily's shoulder. Addie shot me a look that said, _Are you really that stupid?_

I decided that I wasn't that stupid after all. "So how's the baby?" I asked. Lily had been pregnant when she was murdered, which meant that she had the baby in the Fields of Elysium. It is paradise, after all, and that means eternal pregnancy is out of the question.

Lily's face brightened up. "He's fine," she said. "He's grown a lot. I think he'll be taller than Addie when he gets older."

"What's his name again?" I asked, pleased with myself for diverting an impending disaster.

"Harry," James said fondly, slipping an arm around Lily's shoulder. "His name's Harry."

Harry was James' kid, of course. I mean, James had adopted Addie when he married Lily and loved her like his own, but he'd always wanted a small army of children, which I found even more terrifying than Lily Potter. Still, it was a shame that the Potters wouldn't get to raise both of their kids in the mortal world.

I watched the family of three for a few minutes. Dead parents, orphaned daughter-yet somehow, they looked happy. James was beaming, Lily was smiling, and Addie seemed content. I thought that Addie might've been better off without me and the Morrigan, where she'd be raised by her mother and a stepfather who loved her, and a little brother to play with and annoy. She would've grown up in this house, in her room, riding a toy broomstick and learning her mother's favorite hexes. James would have taught her his best pranks, tell her his funniest stories, and I…

Well, I would've stayed in the Underworld, with my comfy office and my old coffee machine, occasionally seeing the Morrigan, and without diapers, or early bed times, or broken vases, and I'd be totally alone. It's be quiet, and peaceful, and I'd be-completely bored. Addie may have been the spawn of the devil when she woke up, but she was my devil spawn, and I was perfectly satisfied with that.

Maybe family wasn't such a bad thing after all.

With all the politics Addison favored later on in her life, it was unsurprising that her first friend would emerge from a political deal.

Addie was four at the time, which meant that the Morrigan and I had been looking after her for three years or so. Gods be praised, she had finally moved past the potty-training stage and had instead moved on to higher goals: surviving preschool.

She was, in all honesty, rather rotten at making friends. I suppose that was in part my fault-well, mine and the Morrigan's-for the training we had given her. The Morrigan didn't believe in true love or friendship, and I happened to be a conspiracy theorist, so Addie was never going to turn out completely normal. However, Addie herself played a big role in ostracizing herself from her peers. She was quite simply far too clever, and tended to make alliances rather than forge friendships. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it left her with many allies, a few more enemies, and no real friends at only four years old.

Then the Morrigan's biggest rival popped into our world and dropped the first of many bombshells that had yet to come-in this case, a tiny little girl named Darcy O'Sullivan.

I'm not sure at what point the house in Godric's Hollow turned into my home, but it had nevertheless. Each day held a hint of normalcy: I would go to work (either for Pluto or as an I.T. consultant) while the Morrigan looked after Addie, and I'd usually be back before midday, which is when the Morrigan would go to her own workplace, typically some war-torn battlefield. It could almost be called a domestic lifestyle, but I couldn't bring myself to care. Having a home was new, and different, and I told myself that it was a fun little experiment with mortality.

I was always a good liar.

Regardless, we had a system, and so it was a bit alarming to arrive home to the house on fire, both literally and figuratively.

Addie was sitting outside on the lawn, contentedly sucking her thumb and watching the flames, so that was one less thing to worry about.

"Hello, Uncle Death," she said, not rising from her criss-crossed position. "How was work?"

"Same as always," I answered. "And please remove your thumb from your mouth. It's beneath you."

Addie scowled and did so, switching her focus to our front porch. I followed her gaze, and saw the Morrigan yelling at another woman and a child-size blanket slug. "Think you can get Nana and her friend to stop arguing?" she asked contemplatively.

"I'm not sure I can get your Nana to do anything she doesn't want to do," I said, "but I'll see what I can do."

The flames abruptly died down, and I took that as a sign that it was safe to approach. My feet crunched on the dry grass as I nervously approached, keeping my eyes steadily fixed on the three figures.

"Hi, honey, I'm home," I said.

The Morrigan imitated her great-granddaughter's scowl from earlier. "It's about time," she said moodily. "Can you please tell this cow of a goddess to remove herself and her spawn from our property?"

I paused uncertainly. "And who might they be?"

The woman stepped forward, her chin raised haughtily. Like the Morrigan, this goddess too was absolutely stunning, but I didn't find myself nearly as attracted to her. She looked far too much like a love goddess for my tastes, with her fair skin and light hair. "I am Brigid," she declared.

 _Ah_. That explained a lot. Brigid was the Morrigan's greatest rival in the Tuatha de Danann (the Celtic version of the Olympians), and the two struggled greatly to achieve even a semblance of civility around each other. My stepping in between a fight of theirs would be akin to interfering in a brawl between Jupiter and Neptune; in other words, I'd sooner hand-feed a starving crocodile raw meat than get in the middle of this.

"Thanatos," I said in introduction. "Might I ask why my house was on fire?"

"That would be the fault of her spawn," snapped the Morrigan.

My eyes returned to the child-sized blanket slug. "Her...spawn?"

Brigid sighed and grasped the blanket, pulling it away and revealing a girl around Addie's age, only much more angelic looking, with her mother's blonde curls and green-brown eyes. After staring at her for a moment, I almost expected to see a halo.

"Meet my daughter Darcy," said Brigid resignedly. "She's young, but she packs a fair bit of firepower, if I do say so myself. Unfortunately, she still doesn't have much control-"

"She knew exactly what she was doing," spat the Morrigan.

"-and your girlfriend here startled her," finished a slightly louder Brigid.

So Darcy had fire powers. Nice. I wondered if I could use her as a stove to heat up coffee. I mean, normally I'd use a microwave, but if I needed a portable heat source...

The two started bickering again. I ignored them, and crouched down so that I was eye-level with Brigid's daughter.

"Hello there, Darcy," I said, as kindly as possible, which was still not very kindly. "How are you today?"

Nothing. She seemed to notice I was speaking to her specifically, but didn't appear to understand what I was saying. Frowning, I decided to switch to Gaelic, thinking that perhaps Brigid had taught her kid the Irish language before English, which I figured was a very Brigid-y thing to do. I didn't know much of the language, but the Morrigan had taught me enough to say a few things.

Still nothing. Actually, Darcy didn't even seem to hear me. Her gaze was fixed on my mouth and the movement my lips made when I spoke, almost as if she was...lip-reading.

I brought up my hands. Many, many years before, I'd collected the soul of a very frightened little boy who didn't seem to understand any language that I tried, until I had begun moving my hands in frustration.

" _A, B, C, D, E, F, G,"_ I spelled out.

Darcy's eyes lit up and she quickly followed my example. _"H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P."_

BSL. British Sign Language. Of course. I laughed aloud, rather pleased with myself. "You're deaf!"

Oh. She was deaf. Which meant she couldn't hear.

"Yes, right, sorry about that." Brigid cut in. "I'd nearly forgotten. Yes, Darcy is deaf, but she knows a fair bit of BSL."

"I'd noticed," I said dryly, occupied with spelling out my name for the girl. "Why did you bring her here, anyway?"

"For an act of domestic terrorism, obviously," grumbled the Morrigan.

"Darcy's father died in an accident," Brigid said, "and she hasn't got any other family. I'm watching after her, but I've got my own duties, and I thought that maybe letting her stay here would bring something of a truce between myself and the Morrigan."

"Why on earth would we want to look after your spawn?" demanded the Morrigan.

Brigid sighed. "Because this is the perfect opportunity to corrupt the child of your archenemy? Because you've got a nice little deal worked out between you and Thanatos? Because, I don't know, maybe you're a half-decent mother who doesn't want a four-year-old deaf girl to end up in the foster-care system for the rest of her childhood?"

I mulled the idea over in my head. "You're basically asking us to baby-sit," I clarified.

"For half the day or so, yes."

"No fine-print?" the Morrigan asked suspiciously.

"No fine-print," agreed Brigid. "I just want a truce and safety for my daughter."

I looked at the Morrigan. "Well, sweetheart?"

"Oh, alright," she said. "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, I suppose."

I smiled at her, then stopped, my eyebrows creasing together. It was odd that two goddesses would be so willing to be a part of their children's lives, when the Greek and Roman pantheons expressly forbid interference.

"Won't you get in trouble?" I asked. "For being in your children's lives?"

Brigid laughed, tossing her golden hair over her shoulder. "You're funny," she said to me. "Greeks and Romans are so backwards, you know that? Children are what keep a culture alive, what keep us alive. You'll find that out, one day," she said, her eyes shining with something that looked akin to sorrow. "Besides, who is going to tell us no?"

I couldn't really think of an answer to that, and so Darcy became like another member of our tiny, messed-up family.

Well, not quite. First she had to survive both the Morrigan's enmity and Addie's suspicion, neither of which is easy. It didn't help that Addie disliked everyone on principle.

"You don't look like a blanket slug now," Addie said imperiously, surveying Darcy from her seat on the couch. I'd brought both girls inside and was attempting to introduce them without (much) bloodshed.

I sighed. "She can't hear you, Addie," I explained.

"Why?" Addie was curious. She'd never encountered anyone with a disability before. "Is she dumb?"

"No, she's deaf," I said, suddenly glad Darcy couldn't hear us. "She was just born unable to hear. She can read sign language, though."

"Huh," Addie said. She thought for a moment. "Like hand motions?"

"Exactly," I said, relieved. "But they're very specific-"

Addie cut me off with an almost universally rude hand gesture, looking Darcy dead in the eye as a challenge.

I was horrified (and also slightly proud). "Addison Evans-"

Darcy snickered and made an even ruder gesture back at Addie, then signed something to me, though I missed most of it. "- _like_ _her_."

Addie was surprised, then pleased. "What'd she say?" she asked, turning to me.

"She likes you, I think," I said, bemused. Since when did four-year-olds learn inappropriate hand signals?

"What's her name again?"

"Darcy O'Sullivan," I told her, then looked at Darcy. " _A-D-D-I-E,"_ I signed, pointing at my apprentice.

Darcy repeated what I said obligingly, then grinned. For a split second, I saw the same mischief usually present in Addie's expressions, and realized that I might have made a very big mistake in agreeing to babysit a Celtic demigod with fire powers. But Addie seemed to enjoy her company, so surely it wouldn't be that bad, right?

Approximately four minutes later, the fire alarm went off and the kitchen was in flames. Luckily, I was able to put out the fire with the garden hose before it spread to my coffee selection.

"Be more careful!" I shouted at Addie, hoping that she'd translate it for Darcy.

"Okay!" she called back, stomping out a spark that had landed near her. "Next time, we won't get caught," she said under her breath.

I decided that in-house sprinklers would be a worthwhile investment.

It didn't take long for Addie to adjust to signing. Truthfully, she picked it up far more quickly than I ever did, so that in a matter of months, she and Darcy could hold fairly advanced conversations in BSL-well, as advanced as four-year-olds get, anyway.

" _Henry is a thigh,"_ Addie signed moodily as she and Darcy walked out of their kindergarten class.

Readjusting her backpack, Darcy replied, " _Do you mean that Henry's a butt?"_

Addie hesitated, then pointed to her bottom. " _That?"_

" _Yup,"_ Darcy said.

" _Yes. Henry is a butt."_

School was the easiest way to get Darcy and Addie out of the house for a few hours every day. They were both five, so I dropped them off at kindergarten every morning and let the teachers do the rest. It was a little more difficult because Darcy was deaf, but Addie either wrote down or translated whatever Darcy needed to know. She usually just translated, since her writing skills were about as advanced as that of a drunken sloth, but she was getting there.

" _Hello, ladies,"_ I said, helping them climb into my blue minivan. Minerva had informed me that a minivan was the wisest vehicle for a family with two kids, so I had purchased one, but I kind of felt like she was just making fun of me, especially since Pluto couldn't look at it without snickering when he visited for business.

" _Hi, Mr. Death,"_ Darcy signed.

" _How was school?"_ I asked.

" _Boring,"_ Addie told me, buckling her seatbelt. " _We practiced writing...Darcy?"_

" _Letters,"_ Darcy supplied promptly. " _And Henry pulled Addie's pigtails."_

" _Maybe he likes you,"_ I suggested, internally vowing to run a background check on this 'Henry.'

Addie made a disgusted face. " _Gross."_

" _We can murder him tomorrow,"_ Darcy said consolingly, patting Addie on the shoulder.

I found myself feeling very glad that few people could understand sign language. If a few more did, I might be investigated for child abuse. " _Need any help?"_

" _No,"_ Addie said, shaking her head. " _We've got it."_

The next day, I heard a mother mention the lice infestation Henry had procured, keeping him out of school, and knew that my girls had something to do with it.

"Did you teach Addie one of your bug curses?" I asked the Morrigan, who was comfortably propping her feet up on my lap and perusing a magazine.

"No," she said, turning a page. "No favoritism in this house. I taught both of them."

 **And that's a wrap, folks! I know it was a lot of fluff, but it was necessary. Next time, we'll get into the real meat of the story, so that's something to look forward to. Speaking of next time: cats and skunks are definitely the same thing, right? Right?**


	3. Power: New Friends and Assorted Curses

**Hey everyone, thanks for your patience! Like I promised, here's the third installment of Death's Apprentice, but before we get to all that, I wanted to thank you all once again for taking the time to read my story. Your views, favorites, follows, and especially reviews make me smile every time (which FYI makes the words flow even faster), and your continued support means everything. Remember, "** _ **this is sign language,"**_ **so without further ado, the story!**

Every family needs a dog, but I didn't think ours needed a demonic witch's familiar.

"It's a guide dog," Brigid had insisted, handing an exuberant Darcy a wriggling golden puppy. "It can let Darcy know if a car's coming, or if a fire alarm is going off, or any of the usual life-threatening noises that she wouldn't notice otherwise."

"It's a _crup_ ," I said. "It isn't a dog at all!"

"It's a magical dog," Brigid said stubbornly. "And it's very protective of witches and wizards."

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, fantastic. It might bite my hand off, but at least it'll protect Addie and Darcy!"

"Exactly," said Brigid. "I'm glad you understand."

I glared at the crup. It was almost identical to a Jack Russell terrier, except that it had a forked tail. Through my experience with Underworld creatures, it's best not to trust anything with any kind of horns or a fork on their tail. "I don't like it."

" _It is a she,"_ Darcy put in.

" _What's her name?"_ Addie asked, eyeing the creature with interest-a look that never promised anything good.

" _Now hold on just a second here,"_ I said hurriedly, _"I'm not sure that I'm comfortable having-"_

The dog growled at me, showing off a set of very scary looking teeth, then nuzzled its head into Darcy's hand and whined.

" _I'm gonna call it Briggie,"_ Darcy decided. _"After Mum."_

Brigid looked suitably flattered and pressed a kiss to her daughter's light hair. " _Thank you, sweetheart,"_ she said, slipping her green cloak over her shoulders and fastening the clasp. " _Take good care of Briggie. I'll see you tonight."_

And with that, she vanished in a swirl of showy golden light. It was my personal opinion that Brigid should take up a career in show business, but I figured mentioning any such thing to her would not be in my best interests.

"Right," I said, nervously eyeing the dog. "Addie, why don't you take Darcy and scope out the backyard to see where we could put a doghouse?"

Addie nodded agreeably and Darcy set the newly christened Briggie on the floor, before linking arms with Addie, signing as they went outside. I wasn't entirely sure about what she said, but I thought it was something about "dog palaces" and a TV, which wasn't a good sign. However, I had bigger fish to fry.

Talking to animals wasn't exactly a forte of mine. Indeed, the only animals I could conceivably understand were highly intelligent and usually magical ones. Fortunately-or perhaps unfortunately-this _crup_ fit both of those criteria.

"So," I said, crouching down on the floor so I could meet its beady little eyes, "it seems like we'll be spending a lot of time together in the future."

 _Bad luck for you_ , snickered the crup.

This would be difficult. "We shouldn't have any issues as long as you obey my rules."

 _Then I suppose we're going to have lots of issues._

"Mind your tone," I said imperiously. "I am the god of death."

The crup rested its head on its paws and gazed at me unflinchingly. _And I'm a dog. Your point?_

"I thought crups were supposed to like magical beings," I complained.

 _I do,_ said the crup. _If it's Darcy._

Hmm. "You seem to have grown attached quickly."

It shrugged, if crups could shrug. _What can I say, I'm something of a sap. And she's an imp._

"Oh." I considered that for a moment. "What do you think of Addie?"

The crup looked uncomfortable. _She's...um...she's a little scary, to be honest. She smells like death._

"She smells like me? She must have gotten into my cologne again. The last time-"

 _No, not the person, the state of being,_ said the crup, apparently desperate to cut my story short.

"Well, she is my apprentice and a great-granddaughter of the Morrigan," I said, feeling pleased. I looked the creature over with a critical eye. "Are you house-trained, by any chance?"

The crup seemed to sigh. _I'm a guide dog, you moron. Yes, of course I'm house-trained._

"Well, you didn't have to be so rude…"

Addison was playing with her dolls in the sitting room when I took refuge in my favorite armchair. Exactly what game she was enacting was unclear, but involved the sacrifice of at least seven dolls to the flames of the "volcano," which was actually just her Nana's favorite cauldron. Knowing what the Morrigan cooked up with that cauldron, I thought perhaps a volcano would be a preferable fate for the unfortunate plastic souls being sacrificed to its depths.

"Has Brigid picked up Darcy and Briggie?" I asked, watching with interest as Addie dropped another doll into the cauldron.

"Yup," Addie said. "I think she stole more of my socks."

"That sounds like her." Darcy was already something of a kleptomaniac, and she held a particular fascination with Addie's colorfully patterned footwear. "Which pair did she take this time?"

"Not a pair," said Addie, pulling up her pant legs to reveal mismatched socks, one decorated with unicorns farting rainbows and the other depicting skulls and crossbones. "Two different kinds."

"She has a very unique fashion sense," I said delicately. We sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, or at least I did-Addie was preoccupied with making the noise of explosions as she pretended that lava was flowing from the cauldron.

"The fire gods are sated," she announced to her toys, setting the remainder of her dolls aside with satisfaction. "The rest of your clan is spared."

Now seemed as good a time as any to bring up Addie's progression in the first test of becoming a Master of death (with a lowercase d, of course. She wasn't going to become a master of me, but a master of the inanimate state of being). "How goes your gaining of power?"

Addie blinked uncomprehendingly. "What?" she said succinctly.

"Power," I repeated, annoyed. "Addison, we talked about this."

"I don't remember," she admitted. "When?"

"A few years ago," I said. "You were a little over one."

She rolled her eyes. "Uncle, my memory doesn't go back that far."

My mouth formed a circle. "Ah," I said. "Mortals have such short memories."

"Mortal children," she corrected.

I waved a hand dismissively. "Yes, yes, whatever. It's the same difference."'

"It's really not, Uncle."

"Regardless," I said impatiently, "that means we need to talk about it."

Addie rested her chin on her knees and waited.

I cleared my throat and began. "Normally, apprentices must first attain power before truly starting this test," I lectured. "However, you're a child of Jupiter and the great-granddaughter of the Morrigan. Power isn't going to be an issue for you. Unlocking it and controlling it is going to be your problem."

"I can control it," Addie said defensively. She paused, nose twitching, and then violently sneezed, shattering a nearby vase sitting on the mantel. "Oops."

"Like that," I said. "Tell me, Addison: what exactly are your powers?"

"Um…" Her eyebrows scrunched together. "I blow stuff up when I sneeze?"

"Try again," I said. "That shows a lack of control, not your actual powers."

Addie thought that over, then brightened. "Oh! I can shoot out sparks!"

"Lightning," I clarified. "Good. Your powers over electricity are much more than merely sparks, though, so we'll have to work on that. What else?"

She deflated. "That's it, Uncle Death."

I tapped her chin. "Not quite. Remember how we were at the store and you told me that a man was red?"

"Well, he was," she said defensively.

"I know he was," I said. "He was old and was about to die, which is why he looked red to you. The closer someone is to death, the redder they turn. Most of the time, healthy people have so little red that we can't see it unless we look for it."

"Huh." Addie stuck her legs out in front of her and stretched. "What do dead people look like?"

"Grey to black."

Addie looked mildly concerned. "Mum and Dad always look grey when they visit."

"That's because they're dead," I explained, internally slapping myself. Whoops. Way to break it to her gently, Death. "They can only come see you on Samhain, when the bridge between the land of the dead and the mortal world is weakened."

She seemed to accept that without much issue. "If they're dead, am I dead? Is it inherited?"

A laugh made its way out of my mouth unbidden. "No, death isn't inherited, but mortality is."

"What's mortality?"

The problem with young kids was their propensity towards sniffing out the most difficult questions to explain. "I guess you could say mortality is the ability to die," I said after a moment.

"Cool," Addie said. "Like a superpower?"

"Sure, if you want," I told her, shrugging. "Speaking of superpowers, we haven't quite finished your list of powers."

Addie scoffed. "I'm pretty sure we have."

"Well, we've finished your current powers," I corrected. "But that doesn't mean you won't develop others later on."

"Really?" she asked, intrigued. "Like what?"

"For one thing, you're a witch," I said matter-of-factly. "But you won't get any training with that until you're eleven and go to Hogwarts."

Addie frowned. "Boo."

I paused, an idea striking me. If Lily ever found out, she would kill me, but she didn't have to know. "Your Nana wants to teach you how to curse someone," I said finally. "The Celtic curse, I mean, not the witch kind. They happen to be a specialty of hers."

Addie grinned. "Awesome," she said, and that was that.

"Uncle Death, will you read me a story?" Addie asked.

I glanced up from the newspaper, noticing with a start that my apprentice was already clad in her bright blue onesie pajamas. "Isn't it a little early for that?" I said, glancing at the window and noticing belatedly that it was completely dark. "Oh. Never mind. Sure, why not? Go pick out a book and get into bed."

Addie beamed and darted off, stepping only on the balls of her feet. She'd taken to doing that recently; apparently, Darcy had told her that it improved balance. I had my doubts, especially since Addie slid into a wall while I was watching her, mostly likely due to her cloth-covered feet on a slick wooden floor, but to each their own, I supposed.

After giving her a few minutes to get settled, I made my way upstairs and into Addie's room, where she was already nestled beneath the covers. Her room was an astonishing mix between macabre and adorable, with cheerfully blue walls, cartoon unicorn and dragon wall stickers, and some sort of shrunken head suspended from the ceiling. A dream catcher, the Morrigan had called it, proudly hanging it above the headboard of the bed. Personally, I thought it was more of a nightmare bringer, but if Addie liked it...

"So what are we reading tonight?" I asked, getting comfortable on the corner of her bed.

She handed me a long, neatly-typed document. "Peter's Evil Overlord List," she told me seriously, squeezing her favorite skeleton plushie.

Pause. "Pardon?"

"Peter's Evil Overlord List," Addie repeated excitedly. "Nana found it for me."

"Okay," I said slowly. "And why exactly are we reading this?"

"It was career day at school," Addie said, "an' I wanna be an evil overlord when I grow up, so I asked Nana for advice and she found it on the Internet."

It was hard to argue with that. It was always best to begin career training early. "Fair enough," I said, opening the printed document to the first page and clearing my throat. "'Number One: My Legions of Terror will have clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.' Why is this useful?"

"I dunno," Addie said with a shrug. "Keep reading."

"'Number Two: My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.' Huh, that's actually pretty smart. I remember one time, back when gnomes were still a big problem in Athens-"

"Uh-huh," Addie said. "Number Three?"

"Right, sorry," I said. "'Number Three…'"

And so it went, with Addie paying religiously close attention to the wise warnings of this "Peter" and with my sporadic commentary on particularly interesting rules, such as "Shooting is _not_ too good for my enemies," "I will not turn into a snake," and the most useful of all: "I will not grow a goatee." I've never approved of goatees; it just sounds too much like goat, and goats are the bane of my existence, mostly because of Thor's beloved chariot-pulling billy goats. I think I read all the way to Number Fifty-Four before Addie fell asleep.

Once I noticed that my apprentice was soundly entrenched in the domain of Morpheus, I quietly rose from the bed and turned out the lamp, heading for the doorway. Before I closed the door, though, I glanced back at her one last time, a small smile curling up my lips as she buried her face into her pillow..

"Addie," I whispered, carefully shutting the door, "I could be wrong, but I think you might just be the best master of death yet."

Rule Number Nineteen said never to have a daughter, but an apprentice wasn't quite the same thing. Was it?

In retrospect, the beach was a terrible idea. The Morrigan had told me such, and shockingly, Brigid had agreed with her, if a bit grudgingly. When both the Morrigan and Brigid can put aside their differences long enough to agree on something, not following their advice is usually a bad idea.

Nonetheless, Addie and Darcy were bound and determined to have a beach vacation, and when they wanted something, _really_ wanted something, it was very hard not to give it to them. Especially when you knew that Darcy was in possession of a demon dog that you most certainly did not get along with and would be more than happy to maim you in your sleep.

"We're not taking the girls to the beach," the Morrigan told me, her tone leaving no room for doubt. "Addison is a daughter of Jupiter, as much as I hate to admit it, and Neptune would be more than happy to send a tsunami after her.

"Noted," I said.

Briggie lifted her head from her paws and stared at me with beady eyes. _Darcy wants to go to the beach,_ she said evenly.

"I know," I said, scratching the back of my skull. "But Darcy is the goddess of a fire goddess, anyway, and fire and water really don't-"

 _Darcy wants to go to the ocean, which means I want to go to the ocean._

Briggie was nothing if not loyal. "I know, but-"

She yawned, showing off her gleaming white canines. _We're going to the beach._

"Also noted," I said somewhat nervously. So it came down to a question of who I feared more: the Morrigan, or a coalition of Briggie, Darcy, and Addie. "We're going to the beach."

 _Good choice,_ said Briggie, settling back down in her former relaxed position, keeping one eye open to watch me.

The Morrigan looked like she was about to sever my head from my shoulders, but when it came to a choice between my girlfriend, someone who had at least tolerated me for over four centuries, or a Jack Russell terrier that happened to own a set of very sharp teeth and was backed by the combined evil genius of my apprentice and her best friend-well, let's just say that I was around Addie far more than I was the Morrigan, which allowed for a much greater probability of waking up handless or in a bed made of snakes. Thus, the beach it was, so at the beach we were on a sunny Wednesday morning.

"Turn around," I said to Addie, squeezing sunscreen out of my hand. "I need to get your back."

Addie made a face but let me smear some extremely powerful sunscreen on the bare areas of her back. On the first day of our family vacation, I forgot that sunscreen was a relatively important thing for two girls of heavy Irish ancestry, so Darcy and Addie resembled tomatoes as much as they did first-graders. Darcy, in particular, had turned a fairly unflattering shade of red and had since begun peeling heavily, whilst Addie's sun exposure had manifested in the form of freckles. Not cute little dots sparsely scattered over her nose, mind you; no, Addie was covered head to toe in hundreds of tiny orange spots, to the point where I could no longer tell where she was sunburnt or if she even was at all. She was just _orange._

"We should check out Camp Jupiter while we're here," I said absent-mindedly, playing connect-the-dots with the freckles on Addie's back and the sunscreen. We'd come to the California coast for our trip, since I was starting to get antsy after so much time spent in Europe and the girls had picked San Francisco for vacation. Camp Jupiter was probably only about a half an hour away from where we were, so I thought that it might be a good idea for Addie to get used to the landscape. And I had really missed watching surfing accidents.

"What's Camp Jupiter?" Addie asked, watching Darcy work on a sand castle a few meters away from where I had spread out my towel.

"It's a camp for descendants of Roman gods," I explained. "You'll have to go there not too long from now to get training."

"You train me already," Addie pointed out.

"Different kind of training," I said, finishing up with the sunscreen. "I teach you about death and your Nana teaches you about magic. The people at Camp Jupiter can train you how to fight, which is important for a demigod of your caliber."

She scrunched up her nose in thought. "Huh. Can I go play now?"

We could always talk about it later. Besides, I wasn't especially keen to send her over to camp, anyway. "Sure. Just don't go above your knees in the water, okay? And stay where I can see you."

"Uh-huh," she said, and then she was gone.

Darcy glanced up from her sand castle, but apparently decided against joining her friend in the water. She'd discovered early on that she wasn't much of a fan of the ocean; she had too much of her mother's blood in her for that. Still, she'd go if Addie asked her, but for the most part, she just enjoyed herself by creating sand sculptures. Darcy was quite the artist, actually, and her sand creations were surprisingly discernible for someone not yet seven. Looking around, I noticed that Briggie was missing from the scene, and found her after a moment near the water, where she was chasing some sort of sand crab.

Everything seemed to be going well, so I pulled out my newspaper and settled in for a nice read, keeping one eye on Addie. The Morrigan would have been watching her, but even goddesses were susceptible to sunburn, especially pale Irish ones, so she had elected to stay in the hotel room and sleep instead. Minutes passed slowly and comfortably, until I was startled by loud screeching and several highly inappropriate Celtic swear words.

Instantly, I was on my feet, searching for the source of the disturbance. It didn't take long to place: near the water's edge, where the ocean was only a few feet deep, was a monstrous squid-looking creature, a Kraken-likely one of Neptune's oceanic goons, and it had a squirming, shrieking Addie in one of its tentacles.

I was running almost before I had seen what was going on, but I was a ways away from the ocean, and the Kraken was rapidly returning to deeper waters with its prize in tow. There was no one other than Addie, Darcy and myself at the beach, since it was still early in the morning; no one would stop the Kraken unless I did. But I wasn't sure if I could-I was going too slowly, despite fear and adrenaline quickening my steps. The giant squid monster could move at alarming speeds for something with no legs and on land, and it had a head start. I was still a good thirty yards out when a hero appeared, in the form of a very tiny, very ferocious crup puppy.

Briggie, I remembered, almost stopping in my tracks from shock, had been hunting near the water line as well. When the Kraken had grabbed Addie, Briggie was much closer than I was, and had managed to get there before I did, launching herself at the tentacle holding Addie and latching onto it with her teeth.

The fact that Briggie wouldn't mind catapulting herself into a fight didn't surprise me in the least. She was a wild dog, one who loved an all-out brawl more than just about anything, and often took a slightly perverse pleasure in others' pain. The thing that did surprise me was that she'd be willing to join in a fight for Addie, whom Briggie wasn't overly fond of on a (nonexistent) good day and seemed to fear/hate her on all the others. Darcy, I understood, but Addie? Not so much.

Briggie's teeth severed the tentacle with no small amount of effort and it fell lifeless to the ground, dropping Addie in the process. Having finally made it to the scene, I picked her up and tossed her yards away from the scuffle in one, fluid motion, taking up a stance in front of her and summoning a godly baseball bat as a weapon.

Briggie licked her bloody lips and examined me. _Would you like to do the honors?_

"Hades, yes," I said fervently, swinging my bat and slamming it into the Kraken's head, watching in satisfaction as it crumpled. "Addie, you okay?" I called over my shoulder, not wanting to take my eyes off of the monster until I was sure that it was incapacitated.

"Uh-huh," she answered, sounding more shaken than I had perhaps ever heard her. "I think I'm gonna go play with Darcy in the sand. Away from the ocean. Very, very far away from the ocean."

"Good plan," I told her. "Stay there until I come and get you."

Briggie waited until Addie had almost made it back to where Darcy was contentedly building sand castles, having not even noticed the commotion. _Nice swing._

"Thanks," I said. "Why did you take on the Kraken by yourself?"

Briggie puffed out her chest. _A,_ she said _, I could totally take it by myself. B, Addie was in trouble and she needed help. Duh._

"Well, yes, but why did _you_ help her?" I asked. "I thought you didn't like her."

She shifted. _I'm not heartless, you know,_ she mumbled. _And Darcy would be heartbroken if something happened to Addie._

I squinted at the clearly embarrassed dog for a minute. What was that feeling in my chest? Pride? Maybe approval. "Aw, you do care."

 _Shut up,_ said Briggie without heat. _Are we going to kill it?_

The Kraken was down, but not completely out. I hadn't killed it, and a thought struck me before I could. It was perfect, rude, and could very well get me in pretty serious trouble on Mount Olympus-just like all the other good ideas I had. I pulled out a pen and piece of paper from the pocket of my swim trunks and scribbled down a short message before pinning it to the Kraken's face and sending the monster floating back out into the deeper waters.

 _Neptune,_ the note read. _If you don't leave my apprentice alone, I'm going to New York for a visit. I think there are a few souls that have escaped death for too long. An eye for an eye, right? You go after my family, I go after yours. What's your new girlfriend's name again? Sally, that's it; Sally Jackson. Death could always pay her an early visit; that does happen with sometimes, you know. Well, hopefully I'll be too occupied training my apprentice to worry about other ladies, so it shouldn't be an issue, right?_

 _Sincerely,_

 _Thanatos_

If I was going to avoid completely ignoring Lily's wish to avoid the Morrigan teaching Addie, I figured that I needed to monitor her curse lessons to ensure that Addie didn't learn how to murder anyone before she was at least ten. Thus, I was stuck in the corner of the table at eight on a Saturday morning. It's a long-held belief of mine that rising before noon is a sacrilege, and Addie had picked that up from me. Unfortunately, the Morrigan did not share our mutual distaste for early mornings.

"Curses," the Morrigan announced, almost bouncing with enthusiasm. "Curses, curses, curses! I do hope you're getting this down, girls."

Darcy blinked slowly, attempting to lip-read, despite her previous failed attempts at the subject, which almost always resulted in a translation so garbled that it could replace the "Bad Lip-Reading" genre on YouTube without anyone noticing the difference.

Addie yawned, pillowing her head on her hand. "Nana, Darcy's deaf. She can't hear you."

The Morrigan paused. "Whoops." She waved her hand and a chalkboard appeared, a small piece of white chalk landing in her open palm. She turned to the board and wrote, _Curses, curses, curses._

"Now, there is no such thing as a bad curse," the Morrigan said, writing down her words on the board. "Actually, no, all curses are bad and if I was a responsible adult, I would tell you to never, ever use them, and we would end this lesson right here. Luckily for you two, Thanatos is the responsible wet-blanket in the household, so I'm going to teach you how to make someone wish they'd never been born."

" _Sounds like fun,"_ Darcy signed, probably to Addie, since the Morrigan had never bothered to learn sign language.

"Since both of you are Celtic witches, you should both be able to do these relatively easily," the Morrigan told them. "However, Brigid's more of a goody-two-shoes, so this isn't in your nature as much as it is in Addie's, Darcy. Still, with a little training, you'll be able to make a man's life miserable in no time."

"Why just a man's?" Addie asked. "Why not a woman's?"

"Women are the superior species," the Morrigan told her. "Most of the time, curses are asked for by men."

"How can you ask to be cursed? _Why_ would you ask to be cursed?"

"Trust me, Addison, men ask for it. One time, when I was in my Macha form, I…"

I tuned out the conversation for a few moments. As the Triple Goddess, the Morrigan had several forms she could choose from: Anu, Badb, and Macha, all of whom were absolutely terrifying and none of whom were as scary as the Morrigan as all three combined. Three-in-one is better than one, I suppose, though I doubt the men she curses feel the same way.

"...and then, when I won the horse race and had my babies on the finish line, I cursed all the men involved with labor pains for nine days and nights annually."

I winced in sympathy. That...sounded like the Morrigan. She was a heavily vindictive, highly vengeful, and inordinately creative sort of goddess.

Pulling out my tablet, I set a reminder. _Remember, avoid pissing off the Morrigan. Bad idea. Very bad idea._

I reread it and nodded, satisfied, and began to put my tablet back in my bag.

"So let's practice," the Morrigan said. "Addie, what do you want to try first?"

"I've got a few ideas," she said evasively. _"Darcy, team up on Uncle?"_

" _Definitely."_

I backed away slowly, bringing up my tablet and typing in another reminder. _Don't avoid pissing off Addie-just avoid her altogether. At all costs._

Addie took to curses like a chicken to water. No, wait, that's not right-penguin to water? Platypus? Ostrich? I'm a little behind on mortal sayings. Maybe duck? Yes, like a duck to water. Anyway, the point is that Addie turned out to be better at her Nana's curses than she was anything else, which was bad luck for me.

"I don't know, Thanatos," said the Morrigan seriously. "I think you look good in pink."

Addie snickered. "I don't think he can pull off both pink and a ball gown."

I didn't think so either. Glancing down at the glittery dress I'd woken up in, I asked, "Couldn't you have cursed me into something a little more manly?"

"Nope!" she said, popping the word cheerfully. "Where's the camera, Nana?"

"With the telly-phone or whatever you call it. Hurry, I want a picture of this to show to the ladies at poker night."

I bade a hasty retreat to the safety of the backyard, taking up residence in the children's playhouse I'd set up for Addie when she was younger. To my annoyance, I wasn't alone.

 _Nice threads_ , said Briggie. _Addie?_

"Addie," I said, no other explanation needed. In the past week alone, my name had been mysteriously and officially changed to Thor McThor, I'd become suddenly magnetic at a knife-throwing competition, and I'd been unable to say any word with an 'e' in it.

 _I feel that,_ the crup said fervently. _Next to you, I'm her favorite target._

She wasn't wrong; Addie loved to target anything that showed the slightest bit of fear, and the other two people in the household were either fearless or morons, depending on the situation. Briggie and I, on the other hand, possessed a health self-preservation instinct.

"It's not like Darcy isn't helping," I said petulantly.

 _Addie is much better at the actual cursing. Darcy usually just cleans up the mess._

This was also true. Addie mostly chose to cause chaos and had no idea nor how to fix it, nor did she feel the need to. Darcy, on the other hand, typically either built up Addie's curses or just reversed the damage, since she was a sucker for a "please" or any sort of displeasure. Addie just didn't care.

"Fair," I admitted. There was silence between us for a while as we listened for danger. "We need a game plan."

 _I'm listening._

"Oh, that's new."

 _Shut and start talking._

"That's paradoxical."

 _I have very sharp teeth and a very short temper._

"Noted," I said, swallowing. "We need to distract her."

 _How?_

"Addie is like a magpie," I told him. "If you want to shift her focus, give her something new and shiny."

The crup tilted its head. _So we give her a gold coin or something?_

"Not literally," I snapped. "We need something that will shift her interest from cursing us."

 _Huh,_ Briggie said, resting her head on her paws. _So...a shiny dog bone? No, no, a squirrel! Everybody loves squirrels. They're delicious._

"She's not a dog," I said, then paused. "A squirrel...Darcy has a pet."

 _I'm aware,_ said the crup. _I'm the pet._

"Yes, I realize," I told her. "But what if we find a pet for Addie? Something unusual, something that she'll find more interesting than even her best friend's demon dog."

 _I take offense to that,_ Briggie commented. _But I see your point. Where do we find a pet?_

I grinned. "We're going to a pet store, of course."

 _Do they sell squirrels?_

The crup and I decided that a magical pet would be best, since it would keep Addie entertained for longer. Luckily for us, Diagon Alley, a quaint little wizarding shopping community in London, had a pet shop specifically designed for creatures of the magical kind-though it smelled a bit odd when we walked in. Not the regular pet shop kind of smell, though that was there too; this smell was a mixture of rotten eggs, overripe cabbage, sulphur, and burning rubber. I wasn't the only one who smelled it, either; Briggie just about fell over from it when we walked it the door, and the owner had his nose sealed shut with a clothespin.

"I'm going to have to ask that you keep your dog on a leash, sir," the owner of the shop requested blandly, handing me a dog leash.

I shrugged and bent down to clip the harness on Briggie.

Her eyes gleamed. _Do it and lose a hand, Death._

I didn't put the leash on. "We're looking for a pet," I told him, trying not to breathe through my nose. "Something magical."

He looked at me strangely. "I don't sell any other kind, sir."

Right. It was a wizarding pet shop. "Of course. So what do you have?"

The man waved his hands in a grandiose gesture. "Well, owls are always a popular choice."

Birds. Nope, not happening. "Not an owl. I'm not really a bird person."

"How about one of our rats?" he asked me, pointing at the cage full of gleaming black rodents energetically jumping over each other.

I wrinkled my nose. "I don't think so. What do you have that will keep a six-year-old entertained?"

The shopkeeper hesitated. "Hmm...what do you think about cats?"

I shrugged. "They're fine, but I don't think a cat would keep her interested for any extended amount of time."

He held up a finger. "Ah, but this is an, er, _enchanted_ cat, a kneazle, in fact, one imported all the way from the States."

I had to admit, that sounded promising. "Enchanted how?"

He moved out from behind the counter and led Briggie and me over to a cage covered in a dark blanket, all the way in the quietest corner of the store. Gently, he lifted the blanket, revealing a tiny kneazle kitten, as he called it. It was actually very cute, with dark fur, a long tail, and a single white stripe all the way down its back.

"Very valuable, kneazles," he continued,"and very unpredictable. You can never tell just how their magic might...um...manifest itself."

 _I don't think that's a cat._

"Hush, Briggie," I muttered, watching the man's eyes.

Strangely, the owner seemed uncomfortable, perhaps a little unsure about making the sale. Obviously, that meant that he didn't want to part with such an interesting creature, therefore making it the perfect gift for Addie. I reached into my pocket for my wallet and realized that I'd left it at the house. Panicked, I thought about going back for it and leaving the kneazle alone for a bit, but what if another buyer came in the two minutes I was gone? Surely such a valuable creature would be quickly snapped up.

I reached a decision. "It would a wonderful gift for my daughter's birthday," I said, then sighed, attempting to look tearful and most likely looking constipated instead. "Only…"

"What?" demanded the shopkeeper, sounding slightly desperate.

"Well, we just haven't the money right now," I said mournfully.

He glanced at my very expensive suit. "Uh-huh."

"My wife is very sick," I explained, wildly making up a story as I went. "And all of our money is going towards that. We're about to lose the house, and it's my daughter's birthday, and I wanted to get her a present that would keep her from dwelling on the fact that we're about to be homeless." I thought for a moment. "Oh, and I just lost my job."

The man's eyes gleamed with what a lesser man might have called cunning but that I preferred to call empathy. "Well, in that case, why don't you just take it?"

"For free?" I asked hopefully, crossing my fingers behind my back. Briggie listened anxiously.

"Sure," he said. "Just look out for-"

I'd already grabbed the kneazle and Briggie and vanished before he could change his mind.

It couldn't have been that important, right?

I found out what the shop owner was warning me about when I tried to wrangle the newly-purchased kneazle into a gift box. Turns out, he wasn't lying about the creature having unpredictable magic; I just really didn't predict that magic to manifest itself in the form of the same burning-rubber-rotten-eggs smell from the shop. It was awe-inspiring, actually, the power of that smell: burning and acidic and eye-watering. It almost knocked me off my feet, the smell was so strong, and I'm used to the smell of rotting bodies, so that's saying something. Take it from me, dead bodies do not smell good, and this was so much worse.

Being able to shift between a scarier skeleton form and a fairly attractive humanoid form does occasionally have its perks, which in this case meant that I could turn off my sense of smell by transforming into the former. Skulls don't have a sense of smell, after all, but as it turns out, skulls do still smell to other people.

"What is that gods-awful smell?" the Morrigan demanded, holding her nose and looking around wildly. "That's worse than the time I ran into Thor after he ran a marathon mud-run during July."

Addie sniffed the air and recoiled, plugging her nose. "No. No way that's…"

"I have a present," I announced cheerfully, handing Addie the colorfully wrapped present. "For your birthday."

Addie looked reluctant to remove her hands from her nose, but did so anyway, accepting the box curiously. "It's April," she said, confused. "My birthday's in July."

"Close enough," I said, waving a bony hand. "Open it."

She shrugged and tore open the paper, lifting off the lid of the box to reveal a fairly angry kneazle, it's white-striped tail lifted high in the air threateningly. "Oh, it is," she said, part horror and part delight.

"It's a kneazle kitten," I announced, pleased. "It's enchanted, so it can emit that smell you're talking about."

"Uncle," Addie said slowly, "this is a skunk, not a kneazle."

Bewildered, I asked, "What's a skunk?"

A slow grin spread across her face. "Don't worry about it," she said, beaming. "This is going to be _awesome_."

Suddenly, I began to get the feeling that I had made a terrible mistake.

 **So what did you guys think? Let me know in the reviews! Again, thank you so much for your responses, and stay tuned for next chapter, where Addie finally goes to Camp Jupiter (and Death really needs a handkerchief).**


	4. Power: Piglet Fights Potato God

**Hey! I'm back, and this time, I bring you plot! Sorry for the delay; finals and AP tests just about killed me. I don't know when the next update will be, but I'll keep you guys posted on my Death's Apprentice Tumblr account at sockmonkey406writing, where I tell you where I'm at in the story, character information that isn't necessary for the plot, and upload any art that people create for my story. If you've got time, check it out! We've already got awesome art of Pepsi the skunk and of course, Uncle Death.**

 **Note: This will be the first chapter where we switch up POVs.**

 **ADDISON**

The first thing you need to know about my best friend is—

 _Addie, what are you doing in here? I'm trying to tell a story!_

I'm telling it better, that's what I'm doing, Uncle. And if you didn't want me adding onto it, you wouldn't have used a Quick Quotes Quill so that I could jump in. Dictating a story concerning your apprentice in a public room is just asking for trouble.

 _I started telling it and I have to finish it. For, um, consistency's sake._

Eh. I don't really care. Anyway, as I was saying—

 _Addison Aster Evans, you listen to me—_

Is my name legally Addison Evans? I mean, James Potter adopted me, so would that make it Addison Potter? Or Addison Evans-Potter?

 _I…don't actually know. I think it's just Evans?_

Well, I'll just stick with Addie, Supreme Overlord of the Universe. It's shorter. Now can I get back to the story?

 _I want to tell it!_

Okay, how about we take turns? I tell what happens to me, and you say what happens to you.

 _Hmph. Fine._

Good. Good. Okay. Where was I? Oh, yes, Darcy. Ahem. So in order to understand the next few parts of the story, there's a few crucial things about Darcy that you need to know. Firstly, she was deaf, but still went to the same public school as me, which meant that she either had to rely on me to let her know what was going on in sign language or she had to write whatever she needed to say down. The former option was problematic because I'm a chronic liar, and the latter was an issue because Darcy's handwriting resembled that of a drunken rhinoceros, so that not even the most veteran of teachers were consistently able to decipher it. The second thing about Darcy was that she had an uncontrollable Disney obsession, and flat-out refused to wear anything but variants of Disney princess dresses. On occasion, she could be persuaded into a Minnie Mouse outfit, but those instances were rare.

Now, the school we went to when we were eight was a fairly stifling sort of institution (most schools are, in my opinion, but this one was more than usual). You see, Hollow Primary had a set uniform, and a strictly enforced one at that. The fifty-page student handbook—which, by the way, was about forty-nine pages past the point of most students' reading levels—demanded that all female students wear a school button-up shirt and a khaki skirt. For me, this wasn't much of an issue, since I always liked dressing neatly, but for Darcy, the uniform just wasn't going to fly. To our teacher's continued horror, Darcy would come to school each and every day in a slightly different princess dress and a matching tiara.

"Miss Evans, why is your friend once again out of the school uniform?" Mrs. Milligan demanded, her hair pulled up in a bun so tight that it was stretching the sagging skin on her face. She was a witch, I remember, and I don't mean the Hogwarts kind. "This is the second time this week."

She and I both knew that this was actually the thirty-third time Darcy was out of dress code in that school year alone, and there'd only been thirty-three days of school. "What do you mean, Mrs. Milligan?" I asked innocently.

"Clearly, you know what our uniform is, Miss Evans, seeing as you've been in it every day this year so far," sniffed the foul woman. "Why, pray tell, have you not enlightened your friend?"

I widened my eyes. "There's a school uniform?"

You could almost see the steam pouring from Mrs. Milligan's ears. "What exactly do you think you're wearing, you foolish child?"

"I dunno," I said, scratching my head. "My uncle always lays out my clothes for me the night before. I just put 'em on."

Mrs. Milligan sighed deeply. "Then why doesn't he pick out Miss O'Sullivan's clothes as well?"

"Oh, my Aunt Brigid drops her off in the morning already dressed," I said promptly, enjoying my teacher's growing irritation. "We just take her to school."

"Fine," Mrs. Milligan snarled, audibly grinding her teeth. "Then can you please tell Miss O'Sullivan to tell her mother that she must be in uniform in the future?"

"Why don't you tell her, Mrs. Milligan, ma'am?"

"Because she's deaf, that's why," she snapped.

I pretended to look shocked. "Mrs. Milligan, that's an awfully rude thing to say about somebody."

By that point, I'm pretty sure that Mrs. Milligan was having to restrain herself from strangling me, which I was pretty proud of. "Just tell her to stop wearing Disney princess costumes to school, then," she said, rubbing the bridge of her nose.

"I don't know how to say that in sign language," I told her. "I've only been learning it for a few years."

In this case, a few years meant four years, which also meant half of my lifetime that was spent in almost constant communication with my deaf best friend, meaning that I was nearly as fluent as Darcy.

"Just go outside!" Mrs. Milligan half-screeched, shoving me out of the door to the playground, where my fellow students—and more importantly, Darcy—were already playing.

I jogged over to where Darcy was doodling on the sidewalk with the colorful sidewalk chalk I'd given to her for her last birthday. She was oddly a much better artist that she was a writer, and sometimes, even at only eight years and two months (one month younger than me, which I never let her forget), her pictures looked like they were about to spring up from the surface on which she drew them. Today's picture was of Piglet from _Winnie the Pooh_ , which was one of her favorite characters from the more recent Disney movies (it was only 1986, after all).

I tapped Darcy's shoulder and grinned as I sat down in front of her, careful not to smudge any of her drawing. " _Looks good,"_ I told her. " _Hand me a piece of chalk?"_

Darcy obliged, giving me a blue piece. " _What'd Milligan have to say to you?"_

I shrugged. _"She wanted me to get you to stop wearing princess dresses to school."_

" _I'd kill you first,"_ signed Darcy, utterly straight-faced in her pink Aurora dress and slightly lopsided tiara.

" _I told her that I didn't know how to sign Disney to you to explain, and that I had no idea that there was a uniform at all."_

" _Nice,"_ Darcy told me appreciatively. " _Did she believe you?"_

" _You know, I think she did."_

I looked down at the sidewalk and started a shaky outline of Eeyore. Sadly, I didn't have a fourth of the skill that Darcy had in her pinky finger, so I ended up with a blue stick drawing of a mutated bear instead of a depressed donkey.

" _No, no, no,"_ sighed Darcy. " _Why am I friends with someone so awful at art?"_

I snorted. " _Because I'm the only one who speaks sign language at this school."_

" _Can you even 'speak' sign language?"_ she mused. " _Shouldn't it be that you 'sign' sign language?"_

" _Picky, aren't you,"_ I said (metaphorically). " _Kids these days—"_

A piercing scream echoed through the chilly fall air. I couldn't tell where it came from, but it sounded much closer that I wanted it to be. " _Did you hear that?"_ I asked Darcy, looking around for the source of the sound.

" _You cannot seriously have just asked me that,"_ Darcy signed, lifting one of her eyebrows.

I ignored her and continued searching for the sound. It wasn't that I wanted to be all heroic and help whoever had landed themselves in trouble; I just didn't want to be some monster's afternoon snack. After a few minutes with no sign of any further disturbance, I let myself relax a little and tentatively picked the chalk up again, still keeping a wary eye on my surroundings, which was why I noticed when the giant potatoes attacked the schoolyard.

Yes, you heard me right. A small army of potato creatures that were approximately the size that I was—which admittedly wasn't saying much, since I was a particularly tiny eight-year-old, but still—were bombarding the lot of Hollow Primary and the children occupying it with shovels, pitchforks, and strangely enough, potato guns, sending the students running and the teachers running even faster. I would've run, too, except that the potatoes had cornered Darcy and me against the school, despite having appeared almost instantaneously. I'd have to fight my way out if I wanted to make it out.

Well, fine, then, I remember saying to myself. Every man for himself. I can deal with that. Then I felt a small hand on my elbow and looked into the grey-green eyes of my one and only friend and realized that, while it may have been every man for himself, we were girls, and that meant we were never, ever alone, even when we went to the restroom.

" _Wish I had a fork and some butter,"_ Darcy told me, picking up a heavy rock and tossing it in her hand to measure its weight. _"I could make a solid dinner out of those potatoes."_

" _Amen to that,"_ I signed fervently, grabbing the cricket bat that was lying abandoned on the grass nearby. " _On three?"_

Darcy considered that for a moment, then shook her head, instead shooting me a grin as she launched the rock in her hand at the nearest potato to us. " _You get in close, and I'll cover."_

I rolled my eyes and charged at the potato, which had angrily begun to stomp its way towards us. At least, I think it was angry; it was difficult to read expressions on a faceless vegetable. All the potato had was a half-dozen eyes or so, and that wasn't any different than your average potato.

Smashing potatoes is oddly cathartic, as I quickly found out. Generally, I'd recommend that you do it on potatoes that you plan to eat, not giant demonic potatoes who are trying to kill you by slamming their bodies repeatedly against your skull in an effort to cave it in, but the basic principle remains the same. It's even better if you sing a war song to yourself while you're at it.

"Hot potato, hot potato, hot potato, hot potato, potato, potato, potato potato," I sang out, slamming my bat into another potato monster and crushing part of its face (?). "Cold spaghetti, cold spaghetti, cold spaghetti—"

Rocks and pebbles zoomed over my head, stunning some of the potatoes that were trying to approach me while I was engaged with one of their cohorts and knocking over some of the others. Darcy's doing, of course; we'd learned a long time ago that she was much better at providing cover than she was in a direct fight. Being deaf didn't bode well in a melee, where someone could attack her from behind, where she wouldn't be able to see them, so she usually tried to stick to distracting and attacking the enemy from afar, like she was doing then.

Abruptly, I thought of what would happen if I broke my leg in the fight. It would severely cripple my ability to fight, that much was certain, and it would probably tip the fight in the favor of the giant potatoes. I could feel how much it would hurt already; I'd had a similar experience with a broken finger back when I was six and got into it with the family television, and I vividly remembered the excruciating pain associated with broken bones—

Cursing, I tried to drag my attention back to the fight. My OCD tended to crop up in extremely inconvenient times, like in the middle of an all-out brawl with a potato army that could have fed the entirety of Ireland for a solid month during the potato famine. Unfortunately, before I can get an intrusive thought out of my head and focus on what's in front of me, I have to repeat the intrusive thought exactly three more times in order to get four, which has a perfect square root and is therefore the closest number I can get to perfect—another quirk of my OCD. Luckily, my ADHD is enough to keep my body on autopilot and continue the fight while I'm mentally breaking the leg in question once more and the other one two times for good measure.

By the time I had finished with my little ritual, nearly all of the potatoes had been eradicated, save for the one Darcy took out from behind with a rock before it could reach me while I was distracted.

" _Thanks,"_ I signed, wiping sweat from my forehead and reflexively straightening my shirt.

" _No problem,"_ Darcy returned, poking the potato she had taken down with her foot and wrinkling her nose. " _It's too bad we had to turn these into mashed potatoes and mix them all with the dirt. We could have eaten them for dinner."_

I glanced around at the carnage. It really did look a giant blender had gone on a rampage and flung the innards of enormous potatoes all over the schoolyard. " _I don't think I'm gonna want potatoes for the next few months, anyway."_

" _Sacrilege,"_ Darcy informed me, plopping back down on her spot on the sidewalk and reaching for her chalk. " _So do we just wait here for the teachers to come back, or should we just assume school's out for the day?"_

" _Let's wait for Uncle Death to show up,"_ I said. " _Knowing him, he'll want pictures. He's weird like that."_

Without warning, the air in front of us flashed blindingly with light, heralding what I knew was the arrival of the true form of a god. Immediately, I slammed my eyes shut, praying that Darcy had done the same. After the light had faded and my eyes stopped feeling like they were going to bleed if I opened them, I cracked my eyelids and squinted at the latest person to join the party, expecting to see Uncle Death or maybe Nana. Instead, I saw what looked like an angel of the Lord in a loincloth.

"I'm going to hell," I said quietly. When Darcy didn't answer, I at first thought that she too was overwhelmed with the sight of the extremely handsome, golden-haired angel/god in front of us, but then I realized that she was looking at me with irritation and suddenly remembered that she was deaf.

"Hello, Addison Evans," boomed the not-angel, flicking his blond hair over his shoulder. He glanced at Darcy. "And company."

"Hey," I said awkwardly, gripping my cricket bat.

He frowned at Darcy. "Why is your company not returning my greeting?"

"Sorry, my friend Darcy's deaf," I explained.

He looked alarmed. "She's Death?"

"No, that's my uncle," I said. "Darcy's deaf. As in, she can't hear you."

The god nodded, his golden hair bobbing as his head moved. "So she is imperfect, then."

I felt a little offended for my friend's sake. "That's kind of rude, you know."

The god shrugged. "She is unsuitable for the post of High King of Ireland, unlike me. Unfortunately, the Tuatha de Danann stripped me of my throne and instead made me teach them farming, the—"

He then said a word in Irish that my nana had taught me when I was four that any responsible adult would have washed my mouth out for saying, if they actually knew Gaelic.

"Pardon me, I'm afraid I didn't catch that last word," I said politely. Beside me, Darcy twitched in annoyance at not being able to understand what was being said around her.

"You know, it's—" the god explained his previous word with several more unflattering words, still in Irish.

" _ **I don't speak Irish**_ ," I said, in perfect Gaelic.

Darcy twitched again. " _Who is this guy?"_

"Who are you?" I asked aloud, acknowledging Darcy with a slight nod.

"I am Bres," he announced proudly, thrusting out his chest. "Sympathetic to the Fomorian cause and the husband of Brigid."

I swore violently and mostly internally. The Fomorians were bad news for kids of the Tuatha de Danann; they were a race of giants and monsters who had been fighting the Tuatha de for as long as anyone could remember (and that's saying something, considering that both sides were immortal). If Bres supported them, then Darcy and I were in deep, deep trouble, and we were in even worse trouble if Bres was married to Darcy's mom and _still_ supported the Fomorians.

" _Well?"_ Darcy asked impatiently, blowing her own blonde hair out of her face while still clinging onto her chalk. _"Who is he?"_

Gulping, I shrugged haphazardly. " _Your stepfather, apparently. Ever heard of Bres?"_

Darcy made a disgusted face. " _Mum does go on about him."_

"What are you saying?" Bres asked curiously. "Can she only communicate with her hands?"

"Essentially," I said. "We were just discussing…um, how you felt about your wife. Do you two get along? Sometimes relationships stagger after the first ten millennia or so. I know a few good marriage counselors that you could consider—"

"Enough!" Bres bellowed, glaring at me. "You're as annoying as the beetles that destroy my crops."

I blushed. "Oh, stop it, you."

That only seemed to make him angrier. "And for your information, my wife and I have been separated for nearly nine years now, and I'm doing just fine."

"Of course, of course," I said, holding up my hands in surrender. Almost nine years; that would have been about when Brigid came down with the parasite that I lovingly call Darcy. Maybe Brigid cheated on him with a mortal and they split up as a result? "I meant no offense. Clearly you're a strong, independent man who don't need no woman."

"Clearly," Bres said, watching me through eyes narrowed with suspicion. He shook his head suddenly, reminding me of a shaggy dog trying to remove water from its ears. "But I've been distracted from my mission. I am here as a representative of the Fomorians and as the mouthpiece of Morgan, who have decided on your demise."

I sputtered. "Now hold on," I said hurriedly, "I don't think that someone as awesome and independent as you should try to kill a harmless little girl like me on the word of some chick named Morgan."

"Watch your mouth," snapped Bres. "That's Morgan le Fay you're speaking of. And I'd hardly classify you as harmless, Addison Evans, daughter of the Roman god Jupiter, great-granddaughter and apprentice of the Morrigan."

"I'm not the Morrigan's apprentice!" I protested. "I'm the apprentice of Uncle Death—uh, Thanatos."

"That's not what Morgan says," Bres said smugly. "Now, Addison Evans, prepare to die."

He stretched out his right hand and summoned a wicked-looking iron broadsword, spinning it casually in his hand to test it. Yelping, I jumped back, nearly knocking over Darcy in the process.

" _Negotiations went a little south,"_ I told her, lifting up my cricket bat.

" _Yeah, the sword kind of proved that,"_ Darcy snarked. Her fingers caught on fire, which I assumed was intentional, since she then chucked a small fireball at her evil or at least extremely violent and annoying stepfather.

The fire didn't really do much to Bres, but it did startle him and singe off his eyebrows, making him look slightly less like an angel and more like a mad scientist who'd had a run in with one of his own experiments. He stopped, confused. "Who is your friend Darcy descended from, to have such control over fire?"

I figured that telling Bres that Darcy was the kid of his estranged wife with another man wouldn't be the best plan, so I thought quickly. "She's a daughter of…uh…Hephaestus," I improvised. "He's Greek."

"You keep strange company," Bres remarked before lunging at me with his sword.

I panicked and dropped to the grass, narrowly avoiding my head being severed from my body. Fighting a god and winning would be pretty much impossible for Darcy and me; we were powerful demigods, but we were also eight, and extremely unprepared for a fight with anything larger than an army of potatoes. Fighting a god and surviving long enough to reach my uncle and nana was only mildly more plausible, but it was the only chance we had.

" _Run!_ " I signed frantically to Darcy, slamming my bat into the back of Bres's calf and rolling forwards into a dead sprint—one of the few things gymnastics classes had taught me. I got maybe twenty yards before a giant root wrapped around my ankle and yanked me down to the ground, shoving my face into the hard dirt.

I spat out dust and rubbed my eyes with the sleeve of my uniform, trying desperately to free myself from the clutches of Bres's nefarious plant minion. My best efforts failed and I had resigned myself to clearing my vision and attempting to summon a bolt of lightning (unlikely, since I had yet to use anything much larger than a static shock) when a hand landed on my shoulder. If I had possessed complete control of my responses, I would have noticed that the hand was considerably smaller than one of Bres's; as it was, though, I failed to realize this and instinctively punched the owner of the hand in the face.

The hand retracted instantly and I swung my head around to see who I'd hit, still blinking dust and dirt out of my eyes. I expected Bres with a sword pointed at my throat, but instead saw Darcy, rubbing her face and wincing.

" _Sorry,"_ I told her, rubbing the back of my head. " _Thought you were Bres."_

" _I'm going to try not to take that as an insult,"_ Darcy signed, raising an eyebrow and shooting a small burst of flame at the root around my ankle and disintegrating it. She reached out a hand and helped me up. " _Now let's get out here before Bres gets rid of my distraction."_

I looked over at where we'd left Bres and glimpsed a small, pink rabbit-pig hybrid viciously attacking him by latching onto his shining blond hair and ripping whole patches of it out, before launching itself at his arm and gnawing.

" _Piglet doesn't like Bres,"_ Darcy signed, looked satisfied.

I'm pretty sure my respect for Darcy doubled as we watched her sidewalk chalk drawing of Piglet fight a literal god. " _Did you do that?"_

" _I did."_ Her face showed nothing but pride. " _Mum's got power over inspiration, which includes stories and created characters, so I can make them real."_

" _So you have power over Disney,"_ I said. " _That is so unbelievably unfair."_

Bres managed to throw off the frenzied Piglet for a brief moment. "Brigid!" he roared. "I know this is one of your powers!"

I exchanged a glance with Darcy. " _I think that means it's time to leave."_

" _I wouldn't know,"_ complained Darcy as we started to run towards the direction of our house. " _I'm deaf."_

 **THANATOS**

When Addison and Darcy charged into the kitchen covered in bloody patches and dripping with mud and what seemed to be mashed potatoes, I was not all that alarmed at first; I just assumed that they'd gotten into yet another food fight at school and had been sent home for starting another bloodbath amongst the children. Then, of course, Addison had to proverbially open her mouth and ruin my much more pleasant illusion of trouble.

" _So you two are telling me,"_ I signed hesitantly, " _that Darcy's father Bres—"_

" _Stepfather,"_ Darcy corrected, bending down to scratch Briggie's ears, having been separated from her all day (for some reason, the school didn't approve of a yappy dog with violent tendencies).

"— _that Darcy's stepfather Bres tried to kill you after sending a small army of potato monsters to your school?"_

"That sounds like Bres," the Morrigan said, leaning against the fridge and crossing her arms. She'd learned to understand most of what Darcy signed, but still couldn't sign anything more than the alphabet herself. "He always was fond of his potatoes."

Addie nodded, absentmindedly tugging on the end of her plaited orange pigtails. " _He said he was acting as a representative for the Fomorians—_ " she had to spell out the word, since she didn't know the word for it in sign—" _and for Morgan le Fay."_

The Morrigan blanched stark white. "Hold on," she said. "Addison, did you say Morgan le Fay?"

" _That's right_ ," Addison signed, perking up with interest. " _Why? Is she strong or something?"_

Apparently, Addison had decided that it was time for her to decide on a worthy evil overlord rival.

"You could say that," the Morrigan said, looking dazed. "Morgan is an old friend, I suppose. I taught her everything she knew—that I knew."

Addie quickly translated what the Morrigan had said to Darcy, then turned back to us. _"That sounds promising—I mean, unfortunate."_

The Morrigan shook her head. "Yes," she said distantly. "I had thought her dead for over a thousand years. The fact that she survived, after all this time—that she survived my curse—and Bres said that Morgan wanted him to kill you?"

" _That's right,"_ Addie said, now looking distinctly uncomfortable. " _He also said that I was your apprentice, not Uncle's, which I thought was a bit odd."_

If the Morrigan had been white before, now she was grey. "Oh, Danu," she whispered, rubbing a shaking hand over her eyes. She stayed like that for a moment, breathing deeply, then dropped her hand and immediately began barking out orders. "Addison, pack as much of your things as you can," she said. "Darcy, collect what you have here at the house. I'll let your mother know where we are."

"But Nana—" Addie said.

"No buts, Addison!" the Morrigan snapped. "Now go!"

I put my hand on the Morrigan's shoulder as the girls scurried from the room. "Morrigan, what's going on?" I asked her quietly. Seeing her scared was an altogether new and entirely unpleasant experience, and I wanted to know what had a normally fearless goddess fleeing in terror. "Why are you so afraid of Morgan le Fay?"

The Morrigan's dark red hair shimmered on her shoulders like blood on white snow. "You're not the first death god to take an apprentice, Thanatos," she said. "Nearly two thousand years ago, I took Morgan on as mine. She was brilliant and powerful and talented, and a minor goddess in her own right. She became like my own daughter over the time I taught her. We were practically inseparable for hundreds of years."

"What happened?" I asked, almost dreading the answer.

Her eyes glazed over with something that looked like grief. "I took another apprentice," she said. "Not quite as brilliant or as talented as she was, but a fantastic magic user in his own right. Morgan hated him, and despised the fact that I focused most of my attention on him. One day, she snapped."

"She couldn't handle it?"

The Morrigan shook her head. "No. She tried to kill him, and when that didn't work, she went after me."

"What did you do?" I pressed.

"I had to destroy her," the Morrigan said sorrowfully. "I thought she was dead these past centuries. I _mourned_ her."

"I'm sorry," I said softly, pulling her in for a hug and resting my chin on her shoulder, even while my head spun. I couldn't imagine having to destroy my own apprentice. I couldn't imagine having to kill _Addie._

I prayed I never had to.

"We have to go," the Morrigan said, pulling back and discreetly wiping her eyes. "If Morgan really thinks that Addison is my apprentice, it could have set her off again, even after all this time. She knows where we are, and she will not hesitate in killing Addie."

"Alright," I said, rubbing my hair. "Alright. Where will we go?"

The Morrigan paced for a moment, muttering to herself. "We need to leave Godric's Hollow," she said under her breath. "Somewhere Morgan can't track. Hogwarts would protect us, but Addie's too young. Leaving the country will only delay her. We need a place where the Celts have no power, where other gods have power. Camp Half-Blood? No, they wouldn't accept the daughter of a Roman."

"Then where?"

The Morrigan stopped moving and met my eyes evenly. "Camp Jupiter," she said with finality. "We're going to Camp Jupiter."

 **So what did you think of my shiny new villains and plot? Let me know in the reviews! Next time, we'll get to meet everyone at Camp Jupiter: almost two decades before the Prophecy of Seven!**


	5. Power: We'll Burn That Bridge, Too

**I'm alive! Sorry for the wait, but I've been in Yellowstone, Hawai'i, and the magical land of back-to-school. Hopefully I'll update a little more frequently now, but don't hold your breath. Regardless, I am most assuredly not abandoning this story, even if I publish the last chapter when I'm old and grey.**

 **Anyway, enjoy!**

 **THANATOS**

The Morrigan was scaring the kids.

Well, she was scaring Briggie and me, anyway. Addie and Darcy seemed perfectly happy to leave Godric's Hollow semi-permanently, under the assumption that they wouldn't have to go to school the next day. I, on the other hand, was shaking in my very expensive boots and fidgeting with my bow tie as the family gathered in the living room for what would probably be the last time.

"Is everyone ready?" I asked faintly, internally cataloging everyone's luggage. We each had a suitcase with everything we'd need for our new life, even Darcy, who was both family and in danger from the Morgan le Fay/Bres alliance and was therefore coming with the rest of us.

"We had better be," snapped the Morrigan. "Darcy, set the house on fire."

Luckily, Darcy was still deaf, and didn't comprehend the request.

"What?" I sputtered. "Dear, I think you're overreacting a little-"

"Thanatos," interrupted my girlfriend, "le Fay can use anything belonging to us-any hair, any photos, any thing of meaning-to either track us or kill us. I taught her how to. Believe me, I'm not overreacting."

"We have to burn the house?" Addie asked in a small voice, clutching her skunk's cage tightly. It seemed to suddenly strike her that we'd be leaving the only home she'd ever known, and we might not ever come back.

"We'll come back as soon as we can," I said, crouching down to meet my apprentice's eyes. "We can rebuild it."

"Just like before?"

"Just like before," I promised, internally vowing to blackmail Hephaestus and Minerva until they fixed it back, since home repair wasn't exactly in my godly skill set.

Addie grinned, looking deeply relieved, and signaled Darcy. " _Light her up, Darcy."_

Darcy pointed to the Morrigan questioningly.

" _No!"_ Addie replied instantly, horrified. " _Darcy, the house! Burn the house, not my nana!"_

Forming an 'o' with her mouth, Darcy threw a fireball at one of the walls and watched with no small amount of pleasure as the flames caught.

I grabbed both girls' hands and looked to the Morrigan. "Ready when you are, babe."

She nodded grimly and snapped her fingers, and the burning room faded out into blackness as we traveled through the shadows. We landed in several places before ever reaching the States, hoping to throw off any search of le Fay's; I think I saw a glimpse of African savanna and a block of what could only be Tokyo, but we only stopped for a few seconds each time, so it was difficult to be sure. Finally, our feet touched asphalt and the stench of the ocean reached our noses-along with the sound of roaring traffic.

I swore violently and yanked the girls out of the road, narrowly dodging an annoyed driver. The Morrigan wasn't so lucky; a car slammed into her before she could move, which would've killed her, had she been mortal. As she was a goddess, the car merely knocked her over and swerved around, honking all the way.

"Mortals," she hissed, limping out of the highway and rubbing her back. "I'll curse that one later."

I snorted and glanced at our surroundings. We were next to the Caldecott Tunnel, so the entrance to Camp Jupiter was close by, though I wasn't entirely sure where.

"Hey!" a strange girl called. "You guys looking for camp?"

The voice had come out of the tunnel. Since it was the only choice we seemed to have, I hesitantly led the way towards the sound, keeping a wary eye on Addie and Darcy. Suddenly, what looked like a service tunnel branching off from the main appeared, along with a fairly short girl in impeccable golden armor and a feather plume in her helmet.

"Welcome to Camp Jupiter," she said pleasantly, blindingly white teeth gleaming against dark brown skin. "I'm Maggie Holmes. Come on in."

She led the way through the tunnel, only pausing to occasionally check to see if we were following. I was surprised that she was trusting enough to turn her back on strangers, but then, her hand never strayed far from the hilt of her sword and her shoulders were rigidly straight, so perhaps she was paying more attention than I had first thought.

We emerged from the darkness into enormous fields of green-covered hills and a Roman-style city perched in the distance. A river was directly in front of us, though, and it blocked our path with its raging white waters.

"Now," Maggie said, turning to us with a smile," before we cross the Tiber and I take y'all to Camp Jupiter, why don't you tell me who you are and what you're doing here."

It wasn't a question, exactly, but Addison opened her mouth to answer anyway. I immediately cut over her, knowing that Addie was predisposed to speak in a way that made people want to strangle her.

"We're the Evans family," I said evenly, straightening my suit jacket. "I'm, uh, Tod Evans, and this is my wife-"

"Morgan Evans," the Morrigan said, trying to smile, though it ended up as more of a pained grimace. She must have decided that 'Morgan' would be the closest thing to her actual name and therefore the easier thing to remember. Either that, or she just wanted to piss le Fay off, if she ever found out.

Knowing the Morrigan as I did, it was almost certainly the latter.

"Right," I said agreeably. "And this our niece, Addison Evans, and Darcy O'Sullivan, who's my wife's...sister's...daughter."

"So she's your other niece," Maggie said, obviously withholding a laugh.

"Um, yes, that's correct," I said. "Exactly right."

"Completely true," added the Morrigan. "One hundred percent. Absolute fact. All of it."

Maggie scratched her nose. "Okay then," she said. "So which of you is the demigod?"

"Me and Darcy," Addie piped up, clearly resenting not getting to talk. "Jupiter's my father, but he never shows up on birthdays and stuff."

"And Darcy doesn't know who her father is, yet," I said hastily. "But she has fire powers."

"Huh." Maggie blinked large eyes, curiously blue against her dark skin. She shrugged and held out a hand for Addie to shake. "Well, pleased to meet you, daughter of Jupiter."

Addie stuck out her hand obligingly, jumping slightly as Maggie's eyes widened and she inhaled sharply.

"Jesus Christ!" Maggie said, staring at us. "You're Thanatos!"

Hades-in-a-handbasket, we were screwed. "What makes you say that?" I fudged.

Maggie snarled slightly. "Don't even try, buddy," she said. "I'm a granddaughter of Apollo with the sight. But cheese and crackers, you're Death! And she's-she's the Morrigan, isn't she?"

The Morrigan smirked, tossing her red hair over her shoulder. "Speaking."

Maggie ran a hand over her face. Turning back to me, she jabbed a finger into my chest. "What kind of idiot brings Celts into Camp Jupiter?"

"This kind of idiot, apparently," I said, mildly offended. "In all fairness, Addie is a Roman."

"Well, yeah, duh," Maggie said, rolling her eyes. From her attitude alone, you could tell that she was a young teenager, maybe fourteen or so. "She's the daughter of Jupiter, which is one of two reasons why I'm not gonna tell anyone y'all's secret."

"What's the second reason?" I said, trying not to obviously sigh in relief.

Maggie snorted and pulled off her helmet, letting her thick black ponytail fall down her back. "You're Thanatos and the Morrigan," she said. "Only fools make death gods and goddesses mad, and I ain't no fool."

 **ADDISON**

Settling into Camp Jupiter was an odd experience. Obviously, Darcy and I had grown up with literal gods and goddesses, so that didn't bother us much, but living with so many powerful people in such close proximity took some getting used to. We were used to knowing that we were almost undoubtedly the strongest people in any room not containing our guardians; at Camp Jupiter, just about every person we spoke to was a legacy, demigod, or monster.

Luckily for us, we really, really liked the people in charge. As it turned out, Maggie was one of the two centurions of the Second Cohort. Since she was the newest of the centurions, Maggie didn't have much political influence on her own, but the Legion's praetor had taken a particular interest in her.

"Manar's fantastic," Maggie had told us as we wove our way through the winding Roman roads. "She used to babysit me back in Alabama. Our other praetor doesn't really do much; he got the position because his older sister was the last praetor and the position's been in the family pretty much forever."

She rapped twice on the door to what was apparently the praetor's office. "Manar, it's Maggie," she called. "I brought some people you're going to want to meet."

I glanced at my uncle. We were hoping that the praetor would grant us permission to remain in Camp Jupiter, at least until Darcy and I could make it to Hogwarts-if we ever got our letters. If I was reading my uncle right, he was reasonably confident that Maggie wouldn't betray our secret, since she wouldn't want to make two gods angry. Unfortunately for my uncle, he is probably the least intimidating god to roam the streets of Camp Jupiter. He looks far too much like an I.T. technician.

The door opened to reveal a tall girl wearing a hijab and a pair of stylish pink sunglasses. "Hey, Maggie," Manar said jovially. "I was just about to head out to the city. Who're your friends?"

"Thanatos, the Morrigan, the daughter of Brigid, and a kid of Jupiter and a British witch," Maggie said promptly, ignoring my uncle's muffled screech of indignation. "Oh, and the next Death-in-Training."

Manar pulled off her sunglasses and rubbed her forehead. "You'd better come inside."

She ushered us in with a strained smile, setting the glasses down at a coffee table beside the door. Maggie dropped down on a bean bag, while my family and I squeezed onto a sofa meant for two people. After a few introductions were made, Manar settled down in an armchair and squinted at us.

"Celts, huh?" Manar said grumpily. "I don't get paid enough for this."

"You get paid?" Maggie asked curiously.

"Nope. So how can I help you, Death, Death, and Death-in-Training?"

"And Darcy," I pointed out, translating automatically.

" _Hi,"_ Darcy said, forcing her lips in a smile.

"Right," Manar said. "Can't forget her. Again, how can I help you? I'm honored that two gods are visiting the camp, but neither of you are exactly common visitors here, and Celts aren't usually welcomed in Roman domain."

"That's in the past," Nana said magnanimously. "No hard feelings."

My uncle snorted and tried to disguise it as a cough, fooling no one but Darcy, who couldn't hear him anyway. "We need protection," he said, face turning serious. "Some old enemies of the Morrigan's have teamed up and decided to come after the girls."

"Details," pressed Manar. When my uncle wasn't forthcoming, she said, "Look, Thanatos, I'm here to help you. Clearly Maggie sees something in you guys or else we wouldn't even be here right now. I need you to give me a reason to stake my life and career on you."

"Let's not exaggerate," said Uncle. "I hardly think the punishment would be that severe."

Manar lifted an eyebrow. "Have you even met any Romans?"

He considered that for a moment. "Fair point."

Nana shifted in her seat. "Fine," she snapped. "One of the two is Bres, who's the husband of Darcy's mother."

"So he's her dad?" Manar asked.

"Not that we know of," Uncle said meaningfully.

Manar's eyes widened, and she exchanged a look with Maggie. "I see. And the other?"

Nana groaned. "Do I have to?" she asked Uncle pleadingly.

"Unless you want me to."

She blinked. "Yeah, no. Okay, so a few years back-"

"A few thousand years, actually," Uncle cut in.

"-I had this apprentice. Really bright, really powerful, and really, really proud."

"I'm following so far," Manar said with narrowed eyes. "Continue."

I leaned forward and listened intently. I'd heard snatches of the story before, but this would be the first time I caught the whole thing.

"Her name was Morgan Le Fay, and I loved her like she was my own blood."

"Like, the Morgan Le Fay?" asked Manar, incredulous. "As in, King Arthur's Morgan Le Fay?"

"She wasn't anyone's other than her own, but yes," the Morrigan said. "Anyway, one day, I took a new apprentice on. He wasn't as skilled as her, but she was terribly jealous. Over five hundred years passed while her own resentment grew, and finally, she struck."

"What happened?" Maggie asked, speaking up for the first time in a while.

Nana shook her head. "She nearly killed him," she said softly. "If I hadn't got there when I did, he'd be dead. I had to stop her from trying again, so I killed her myself."

"Clearly, it wasn't enough," Manar pointed out. "If she's back and trying to kill your girls."

"I suppose it wasn't," admitted my nana, "but I didn't know that until earlier today."

Manar chewed on her lip thoughtfully. She let a few minutes pass in silence, allowing the rest of us to get fidgety. Well, I was fidgety, but I was also ADHD, so my opinion didn't really count there.

" _Le Fay sounds kind of terrifying,"_ Darcy told me after I'd finished telling the story we'd heard. " _Bres must be a circus performer in comparison."_

" _Seems like it,"_ I returned.

Manar straightened and clapped her hands together. "Okay!" she said brightly. "I can get you guys a house inside the protection of the city, but I don't just give favors for nothing."

"What do you want?" I asked, feeling suspicious.

Her dark brown eyes glistened with delight. "If two death gods are going to live under my protection, I want a few things out of it."

"Such as?" Uncle asked.

Manar shrugged. "Well, that's up to you," she said innocently. "From my understanding, not every death is a fixed point in fate's design. Some deaths don't need to occur to keep the balance of the world in order."

I was impressed. Few people knew that about death, other than my entire family, since my entire family was either dead, living with death deities, or an actual death deity. Still, it wasn't common knowledge by any means.

Maggie must have seen our confusion. "My gran's a voodoo person. She knows just about everything there is to know about the forces of life and death, and she don't mind sharing."

"Doesn't, Maggie," Manar corrected absentmindedly. "She doesn't mind sharing. But yes, that's how I know about it."

My two guardians spoke in a hushed whisper for a few moments. "So you're basically suggesting that we occasionally take the day and leave the souls of Camp Jupiter alone every now and again?" Uncle Death attempted to clarify.

"Essentially," Manar said with a smile. I was instantly envious of her straight teeth, since I had a gap where my two front teeth hadn't grown in yet.

My family had actually gotten a fantastic deal with Manar. People often had two or three near deaths in their life simply because a death deity would oversleep and be late for work, or take a sick day, or just get distracted. It happened all the time, though the gods generally paid more attention to demigods. Mere mortals posed much less of a threat than the child of a god or goddess, after all; if they missed a death day, the world rarely took notice. If say, Neptune's kid skipped a death or two, Jupiter and Pluto would be almost certain to throw a fit.

"And one more thing," added Manar. "The girls train with the Second Cohort under Maggie's supervision. They don't have to be part of the Legion officially, but I would expect them to fight with Camp Jupiter, should we ever need it. Honestly, the Second's got a little competition going with the First, and we could really use the help of powerful demigods like those two."

Uncle Death scratched the back of the neck. "And would they be gone most of the day for training and working with the Second?"

Manar nodded. "That's part of it, yes. They probably be with us at least five hours a day. I understand that might be a deal breaker for you, but-"

"Yes, yes, we're horribly heartbroken about it," Uncle said hastily. "How about you take them seven hours a day instead? It would be easier, since they're accustomed to school hours and all."

Manar squinted at him for a minute. "Sure?" she said after a moment.

"Can we keep our pets?" I asked, pointing at the twin cages under my and Darcy's feet. They'd been suspiciously quiet up until now, which I had me a little worried, but I resolved to figure it out later.

"What kind of pets?" Manar asked, eyeing the cages.

"Darcy has a guide dog," I said, batting my eyes innocently. "Since she's deaf and all."

"That shouldn't be a problem," Manar said, waving a hand in the air permissively. "And the other?"

"Oh," I said, "I just have a cat."

"I don't see why not," Manar said, looking relieved. "A guide dog and a cat shouldn't be an issue."

 **THANATOS**

"That is not a cat," I heard Maggie say. "That is-that's not a cat!"

Screaming started out in the street, and I smiled to myself while I dropped ingredients in the pot on our stove, humming along to the chaos.

"It's a skunk!" someone screeched. "Everyone run, it's a skunk!"

I couldn't help but laugh as my godly ears picked up the sound of a skunk releasing its stink. The screams intensified, and I heard the ever-pleasant sound of vomiting at a distance.

"I think we'll fit in quite nicely here," I said aloud. "Quite nicely indeed."

 **And that's a wrap! What'd you think? Feel free to leave a review, even if it's a flame. I like knowing your opinions, and even bad reviews bring up my story's total count, so it's a win-win situation for me either way.**

 **Next up: More of Death's Tests and plenty of havoc with our new friends. Pepsi may or not attack more people. It'll be great.**


	6. Power: Success Through Stink Bombs

_**So I am not, in fact, dead, and I finally found the time and the will to write the next chapter of Death's Apprentice! It's pretty light plot-wise and new character-wise, but hopefully you'll like it; I thought we needed a little break from the serious plot-stuff. This chapter is mostly good-natured fun, but I really enjoyed it, so I hope you guys do, too!**_

 **ADDISON**

Camp Jupiter was so much better than Hollow Primary.

For one thing, I got to bring Pepsi with me everywhere thanks to our deal with an unsuspecting Manar. Back in Godric's Hollow, toting around a somewhat volatile skunk hadn't really been in the cards, since mortals were notoriously wimpy and unable to deal with the smell of skunk. At Camp, though, these were _demigods_ : kids descended from the Olympians themselves with many of the perks and strengths that entailed. In short, it was the perfect place to unleash a temperamental skunk and use it to threaten, bully, and wheedle the others into getting my way.

Naturally, there were two people who were protected from Pepsi's reign of terror. Maggie was too awesome to spray (or to be threatened by the idea of skunk spray) and Manar was, well, Manar.

"What kind of demigod is Manar, anyway?" I asked Maggie after training one day. Darcy had already left for home with Briggie and Pepsi in tow (they got grumpy around lunchtime), but I'd stayed after to help Maggie clean up.

Maggie snorted and prodded a piece of trash with her toe, a disgusted expression on her face. "She isn't one at all, actually," Maggie answered, glaring at the litter. "Manar's just a clear-sighted mortal. She dropped me off here when I was seven 'cause my gran was busy, and decided she liked it, so she just...hung around."

I gasped at her. "You mean to tell me that she's _praetor_ of the Legion and hasn't got any godly blood?"

Maggie looked extremely proud, and her gold eyes glowed with even more warmth than usual. "That's Manar for you. She babysitted my whole town when I was a kid, so I guess looking after a bunch of teenagers didn't seem so bad after that."

"Gods almighty," I said faintly, shoving my hands into my pockets. "I want to be Manar when I grow up."

"I'd rethink that opinion, if I were you," a new voice said bitterly from behind me.

I whirled, piercing the newcomer with my trademark 'death glare.' Literally, if looks could kill, this one would've, but the guy seemed mostly unaffected, to his credit. He didn't appear more than a year or so older than Maggie, but in the same way I'd been drawn to her, I was repulsed by him. There wasn't anything specific about him to merit such immediately dislike, to be honest; I just didn't like the smirk on his face or the face his jeans were scuffed and dirty or the way he had just insulted Manar, my newfound hero.

"Good thing no one asked you, then," Maggie said shortly, stepping slightly in front of me.

The boy ignored her and looked me over with pale, watery-gray eyes. I tensed, knowing I was being judged, and glared at him even harder. Unfortunately, as before, he remained unworried, probably due to the fact that an eight-year-old girl with pigtails and overalls was trying to melt him into a puddle of goo with her eyes alone, which was both an ineffective and distinctively un-terrifying manner of intimidation. Still, I gave myself an 'A' for effort, if not for execution.

"So you're the new demigod," he said finally, tilting his head to the side. "The daughter of Jupiter."

"What's it to you?" I asked suspiciously. This boy was a snake; even his words slithered and slimed and left an unpleasant feeling in my mouth. I trusted him as far as I could throw him, and given that he was the size of a linebacker and I was, you know, eight, that distance wasn't exactly very long.

He laughed and crossed his arms. "Nothing, really. I'm just taking an interest in the new recruit, yeah? I hardly think basic courtesy merits a glare, now does it, daughter of Jupiter?"

I squinted at him for several seconds, then crossed my own arms, mimicking his stance and trying to appear bigger. "Doesn't seem much like courtesy," I told him. "More like stalkerish tendencies."

Maggie snorted with laughter and apparently decided to intervene, placing one hand firmly on my shoulder (whether to protect me or hold me back, I'm not sure). "Cooper, this is Addison Evans, newest addition to the Second Cohort. Addie, this is Cooper Whitehall, centurion of the First Cohort."

"Pleasure," I said insincerely. "Do you always eavesdrop, or is that just on the kids of Jupiter?"

He scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Don't flatter yourself, Evans; I just overheard you two talking about our praetor, and had to intervene before anything too sickening was said."

"Cooper here hates Manar," Maggie explained, a distasteful look on her face. "He says she's unfit for the job."

"Why?"

"Because he's a racist bigot," Maggie said bluntly.

"That might be the nicest thing you've ever said about me, Centurion Holmes," Cooper said snidely. "And she is unfit for the position. The job belongs to a demigod or legacy, someone who actually has stake in Camp Jupiter, and Manar is neither. A praetor ought to be descended from the gods."

"Please just shove off, Cooper," Maggie said tiredly. "We've got war games tonight; we'll see enough of each other then."

Cooper tipped his imaginary hat in salute and strutted off towards the city, two of his cronies jumping into line behind him. Maggie and I drew together and stood shoulder to shoulder (well, head to shoulder, thanks to the height difference), staring after his retreating back with no small amount of dislike.

"He's a jerk," I said, frowning so hard I thought the lower half of my face would stick like that. "Do we have to talk to him often?"

Maggie laughed and ruffled my hair, causing me to emit an undignified squeak of protest. "Not if we can help it, kiddo," she said, back at her trademark warmth and fondness. "Only at city meetings and during the war games."

Immediately, my face brightened at the thought of the night's entertainment. "Which game are we doing tonight?"

Maggie's eyes gleamed with excitement, mirroring mine. "Tonight's First versus Second, with the others as spectators. And it's Deathball."

Deathball. I freaking _loved_ Camp Jupiter.

 **THANATOS**

It had been a relatively quiet morning, all things considered. The Morrigan had gone off to stir up death and violence in some poor, unfortunate part of the world, and Darcy and Addie had been with Maggie training for the morning-something about sword fighting, I thought. Darcy, as a matter of fact, had already returned to our house in the city for lunch, but Addie had hung back with Maggie to help clean up after practice. The Second Cohort had a group of boys that were both perpetually hungry and notoriously bad at cleaning up their own trash; therefore, Maggie ended up collecting their trash after whatever practice they had, since the First Cohort nearly always practiced after them and made sure to whine about the Second's messiness.

" _What do you want for lunch?"_ I asked Darcy, who was sitting at the kitchen table, swinging her feet cheerfully.

" _Turkey and cheese,"_ Darcy replied immediately. " _With juice."_

I nodded and headed for our fridge, pulling out what I needed and setting it on the counter. Darcy picked a different sandwich every day; she was one of those kids who got bored quickly and needed to constantly try new things to be happy. Naturally, Addie was the complete opposite, and wanted the exact same thing every lunchtime-and woe be to anyone who denied it.

" _How was practice?"_ I signed to Darcy while preparing her food. " _Did anyone give you trouble today?"_

Since we'd arrived at Camp Jupiter, Darcy had occasionally been bothered by a few of the older kids in the Legion who poked fun at her being deaf. As Darcy was, of course, deaf, this didn't normally bother her, not being able to hear them and all. Still, they sometimes made the presence too obvious to ignore, and if Addie wasn't there to scowl them into submission or throw a few well-aimed punches, Darcy sometimes struggled to get rid of them.

" _Nope,"_ Darcy returned gleefully. " _Maggie got me a BB gun and that seemed to do the trick."_

I almost knocked Darcy's plate off the counter. " _Maggie gave you a gun? Darcy, did you shoot them?"_

" _Yes,"_ Darcy signed back, beaming. " _It doesn't really hurt them because demigods have thicker skin than mortals, but it hurts enough if I aim right."_

I blinked several times, nodded to myself, and went back to the sandwich. "She shoots people that bully her," I muttered, shaking my head slightly. "This is fine. It's fine. I'm a terrible parent. This is fine."

The door banged open and Addie stomped inside, leaving her sneakers near the door. "I'm home!" she shouted.

I waved her to the seat next to Darcy and handed the two of them their lunches. Darcy had her turkey and cheese with juice, and Addie, as she did every lunch, had her PB and J on wheat bread, cut into triangles and with a drink of milk.

"Is this the good peanut butter?" Addie asked, eyeing her plate with suspicion.

"Yes, Addison, it's your favorite peanut butter," I said, rolling my eyes. I'd tried using a different kind of peanut butter a few months back, and Addie had refused to eat another bite as soon as she noticed the taste. I probably could have forced her to eat it anyway, which would've been the 'responsible guardian' thing to do, but I just didn't have the heart to let her go hungry when all it took to feed her was her favorite brand of peanut butter. She'd still eat whatever breakfasts or dinners I made for her; lunch, however, had to be the same thing each and every day. It was just one of Addie's quirks.

Immediately after hearing my response, Addie happily dug into her sandwich, excitedly talking with Darcy the whole time. Truth be told, I had difficulty following most of their conversations, and only caught every few words or so. My grasp of sign language was pretty doggone good, but it wasn't second nature like it was for Addie and Darcy. Besides, the two had invented many of their own terms and signs, and all of their conversations were rich with inside jokes and incomprehensible ideas. I doubted that even the most proficient of translators would be able to understand most of what they 'said.'

After mostly finishing her lunch, Addie looked up at me, excitement in her expression. " _Guess what, Uncle Death?"_

" _What's that?"_ I signed off-handedly, expecting another rant on how cool Addie's new friends Maggie and Manar were.

Her face split into a wide grin. " _War games are tonight,"_ she told me. " _First versus Second."_

" _Nice,"_ I returned, a little confused.

" _Darcy and I get to be in it this time,"_ she continued, watching me intently.

"Oh," I said aloud, drawing out the sound. " _That's awesome, Addie! You'll have lots of fun, I'm sure."_

" _Will you come watch us?"_ Darcy cut in, eyes wide and pleading. " _We'd like for you to be there."_

The girls knew that Darcy was the best at wheedling. Addie, as much as I loved her, closely resembled an imp, and therefore inspired absolutely no trust that whatever you agreed to wouldn't lead to your imminent demise or at least almost mortal injury. Darcy, on the hand, had the most innocent and angelic of faces that I'd ever seen on anyone, including actual angels. You just couldn't deny the kid anything. If she asked you to jump off a cliff, you'd do it, fully expecting the sharp rocks at the bottom to abruptly turn into pillow before you landed. And then you'd suffer a painful death, because as much as Darcy looked like a little angel, she was a little demon with a crooked halo.

Luckily, I'd already intended to go to their first war game. Part of it was curiosity and the desire for entertainment, but to be honest, I mostly wanted to go to cheer for the girls. It was stupid, I know; it wasn't like my cheering would give them any advantage. Still, they were like my kids, especially Addie, and if they were going to compete in something, I wanted to be there to see it. I was their 'uncle', after all, and the most constant parental figure in their lives, and I'd be damned if I missed even a school spelling bee that they were in.

" _I'll be there,"_ I told them with a smile. " _I wouldn't miss it for the world."_

" _Not even for a cup of Starbucks coffee?"_ Addie asked, giggling a little.

I flicked her nose and wiped a smudge of jelly off her cheek. " _Not even for Starbucks."_

 **ADDISON**

Deathball, as it turned out, was like paintball, but with a much higher risk of death. Instead of firing paint at your opponents, you shot acid, poison, and fireballs at the opposing death. If you got hit, you were out, and would be dragged off the field by the waiting camp medics. The first team to surrender or lose all of their people lost.

Naturally, it was my new favorite game.

Outfitted in Imperial Golden armor and holding an enormous 'paint' gun, Darcy sat on our sofa and waited for me to get ready. We were both a little nervous about the night's planned events, if thoroughly excited, though we showed it in different ways. When I was nervous or antsy, I would spend an inordinate amount of time washing my hands and straightening my clothing or bag; when Darcy was nervous, she would close up and avoid conversation or meeting people's eyes.

As Darcy's best friend, it fell to me to cheer her up, regardless of my own nerves. " _What does your gun shoot?"_

" _No idea,"_ Darcy said, avoiding my gaze. " _They said we'd find out when I fired."_

Fair enough. I sat down next to her and leaned my armored shoulder into hers. " _You know what I think?"_

" _What?"_ Darcy didn't seem overly interested, but she met my eyes a little more levelly.

" _I think that us winning the match for the Second would get everyone to stop bothering you about being deaf."_

" _You think so, huh,"_ Darcy signed, tilting her head. She still looked careless, but I could tell that I had her curious " _And how would two eight-year-olds and newbies do that?"_

I grinned. " _I may have gotten a kid of Vulcan from the Fifth to help me alter my gun."_

" _Is that allowed?"_

" _There aren't any rules against it because no one's thought to do it. You interested?"_

Darcy leaned forward, finally meeting my eyes all the way. A small smile was growing on her face. " _I'm listening."_

 **THANATOS**

A crowd was starting to gather for the war game. Darkness was a few hours out, but the sun was a long way from its highest position in the sky. I'd managed to feed both of the girls before hustling them out of the house to the field, nearly an hour before the game was set to begin. Despite Addison having told me several times, I wasn't entirely sure what the game was about or what the rules were, but I figured that it would at least be mildly entertaining. They were Romans, after all, and the Roman gladiator wasn't famous for being boring.

Thinking of the gladiators made me start to gnaw my fingernails in worry. The gladiators weren't famous for being safe, either, and anything called a 'war game' had to be somewhat dangerous. Romans did so love their danger and violence as entertainment; it was part of why they hadn't gotten along with the Celts. The two cultures were undeniably similar in their adoration of all things warlike and deadly, if Romans had at least the illusion of civility. Still, these were only kids; surely Maggie wouldn't allow Addie and Darcy to participate in anything too dangerous, as young and inexperienced as they were.

"Alright!" Manar shouted, her voice breaking the uneasy silence with the volume of someone used to yelling over the voices of an army of small children. "In a few minutes, tonight's war game will begin! For the sake of any spectators who've had their heads buried in the dirt the last two weeks, today's is a match between the First and Second Cohorts. The game is Deathball, so anyone hit is out of the game, and the team that either surrenders or loses all of its players loses. The winners of today's match get extra dessert for a month; the losers muck out the stables for two weeks. Is everyone clear?"

There was a noise of assent from the gathered crowd.

"Excellent!" Manar continued, smiling. "May the best team win!"

She scrambled through the crowd to sit in the lawn chair next to me, collapsing into it with a groan of pleasure. "Sorry," she said apologetically. "I've been standing for hours trying to get this set up."

"No worries," I said. "Did you say _deathball_?"

"Oh, yeah," Manar said easily. "You know, it's like paintball, but instead of paint, it's with acid and poison."

"How nice," I said faintly, suddenly glad I wasn't standing, as I was fairly sure my knees would have given out from under me. "That sounds...dangerous."

"Oh, very," agreed Manar brightly. "But we haven't had a death in nearly a year now, so that's good."

"Very," I squeaked, sure that all the color had drained from my already pale face. Forcibly, I shifted my attention from the girl beside me to the field where the match had started, my eyes easily finding Addison's flaming orange hair underneath her helmet. It was difficult to follow her path, since she was comparably so tiny, but she was doing a decent job of both avoiding her opponents' attacks and helping Darcy dodge them. The two girls were working together with one large gun, probably because it was too big for one of them to handle alone.

"Was that a fireball?" I asked Manar, voice much higher than usual.

"Oh, yeah, I forgot that one," she said with a laugh. "Some of the guns shoot fireballs, too."

Luckily, the fireball was headed for the First Cohort, and it knocked a few of their players over, leaving them with giant scorch marks, a few burns, and an out from the game.

Suddenly, I realized that Addie seemed to be reloading their gun. While that might seem like a normal thing to do, I happened to know that this type of gun didn't need to be reloaded often, thanks to the creative genius of the kids of Vulcan at Camp Jupiter. Therefore, the question remained: what was Addie doing with ammunition.

Manar had apparently noticed the same thing. "What on Earth-" she muttered, half-rising from her chair.

My question was quickly answered. Addie crouched down, letting Darcy rest the heavy gun on her shoulder. Darcy took aim and fired at the biggest legionnaire, the centurion Cooper, Instead of being hit with poison or acid or even a fireball, the kid was hit with some sort of water balloon-esque projectile, though I doubted Addie would attack someone packing a fireball with water. As it turned out, I was very right, and the First Cohort's side of the field was immediately enveloped in a disgustingly green cloud of smoke and the nauseatingly out-of-place smell of _skunk_.

"She weaponized Pepsi's spray," I realized, standing up abruptly. "She weaponized the spray! THAT'S MY GIRL! SHE WEAPONIZED THE SPRAY!"

"Oh my gods," Manar said. "That's skunk spray?"

"Damn right!" I said approvingly. "WAY TO GO, ADDIE!"

The Second Cohort cheered and advanced as the smoke cleared and they say the players from the First look dazed, shaky, and nauseated, with several of them violently throwing up on the edges of the field. With the First briefly out of commission, the Second was able to tag most of them in relatively short order, with only a few brave stragglers putting up something of a fight. Within minutes, the game was won, and the First staggered dazedly from the field, too bewildered to be angry about their loss.

Finally, Manar stood, looking nearly as thrown by the results of the game as the First had. "Right," she said, clearing her throat. "While that was a somewhat unpredictable turn of events, I see no reason why a...a _stink_ gun should be illegal in Deathball, though I would have appreciated a heads up, for future reference."

There was some minor grumbling from the ranks of the First, but no one had the energy to protest.

"Right," Manar said again. "I, er...I suppose that means victory goes to the Second Cohort with a record time."

The cheers from the Second shook the field, and I felt wind brush against my hair, bringing with it the powerful stench of skunk.

"Congratulations and dessert and all that," Manar said, still looking a little lost. Her nose wrinkled, and a foul expression crossed her face. "I believe some baths are necessary. You're all free to go. Have a nice night and good luck getting rid of the smell; I'm sure we have some tomato juice _somewhere_."

Slowly, the teams trickled from the field in the direction of the baths, and I waited for my two charges to make their way through the crowd.

"Uncle Death, Uncle Death!" I heard. "We did it!"

"I saw!" I said, sweeping Addison off the ground and spinning her around in a circle. "You did wonderfully!"

There was a tug at my shirt, and I set Addie down to see a smiling Darcy. " _I shot people,"_ she signed proudly. " _Lot of people."_

" _You sure did,"_ I told her, unable to contain my smile. " _You were fantastic, both of you. I couldn't be prouder."_

" _We thought it would be funny,"_ Addie signed, bumping shoulders with Darcy. Both of the girls were practically vibrating with energy and excitement, clearly delighted by their success.

" _It was brilliant,"_ I told them honestly, resting a hand on both of their shoulders. " _Addie, it was a great idea, and Darcy, you executed it perfectly. You're a fantastic shot, you know."_

Darcy puffed out her small chest. " _I like guns_ ," she confided.

I ruffled her hair. " _It's a good weapon for you."_

We started the walk back to the house and the whole way, Addie and Darcy chatted and bickered about who did better and which person they should aim for during the next game. I was content to watch them for the most part, though I jumped in every now and then if the bickering got too intense. They were like sisters, after all, and sisters are both the best of friends and the worst of enemies. Regardless, they got along quite well, considering, and I mostly let them do their thing.

It took a long time to coax the girls into bed once we got home after being so wired during the game, but after a few hours, I was finally able to leave them with the light off. The Morrigan was waiting downstairs, ignoring the chairs in favor of sitting on the counter.

"Hello, dear," I said, moving her feathered cloak from the table and hanging it on the coat rack. "Would you like some dinner? We have some leftovers."

"Sure," the Morrigan said. "I'm starving. Is it red meat?"

"Mac and cheese," I said, retrieving it from the fridge.

"Even better," she said enthusiastically. "Mac and cheese is the food of magic."

I laughed, sticking the container in the microwave and heating the food up. "Well, the girls agree with you, anyway. How was your day?"

The Morrigan rolled her eyes and tossed her red hair over her shoulder. "Boring," she spat. "The leaders decided to negotiate a peace treaty instead of go to war."

I patted her on the back consolingly. "Maybe there'll be an assassination tomorrow that'll spark a new war for you," I said encouragingly. "Or the Soviet Union will send another fake transmission to screw with the Americans."

"One can only hope," said the Morrigan with a shrug. "How was your day?"

The microwave beeped, and I handed the Morrigan her food with a fork. "The girls won the Second Cohort their war game," I told her proudly. "They were fantastic."

"Excellent," the Morrigan said, pleased. "Addison takes after me."

"Really," I continued. "Addie created stink bombs with Pepsi's spray and used them against the other team, and Darcy was a superb shot. I think she going to be one hell of a sharpshooter when she gets a little bigger."

The Morrigan pointed her fork at me. "You're turning into a sap, Thanatos."

I snorted. "I am not either."

"Are so," she shot back. "You're like a first time mom bragging about her kids."

"I'm a first time _uncle_ ," I retorted. "Or master, or whatever. Guardian. It's all new to me."

"I bet you keep scrapbooks," the Morrigan teased. "With pictures of the girls."

I stiffened. "Don't be ridiculous. That's entirely unmanly and sentimental and-"

"You do have one!" the Morrigan crowed in delight. "You do, don't you? I can see it in your face."

I sighed and let my head droop. "Three, actually," I muttered. "With the little...stickers and notes and stuff."

"By Danu, this is too good," the Morrigan said, cackling. "You're Thanatos, the Greek god of death, feared by mortals and gods alike, and you keep scrapbooks."

."Hush," I said, poking her nose grumpily. "Or I won't make you mac and cheese."

The Morrigan laughed. "We can't have that."

A few minutes passed in contented silence as the Morrigan polished off the leftover macaroni and I worked on the crossword in the day's newspaper. For two gods of death, it was an entirely domestic scene, and it brought with it a sense of familiarity and something inexplicably _home_. If this was what having a family and proper home felt like, I'd been missing out for the last few eons spending my time cooped up in my Underworld office.

"Hey, Thanatos," the Morrigan said, breaking the silence. "Do you think you could...could show me some of the scrapbooks. Not for sentimental reasons, obviously, just to see how much Addison has grown in her powers."

"Obviously," I said, unable to hold in a smile. "Why don't we look at one of them on the sofa?"

And so we spent our evening curled up on the couch, enjoying the moving pictures of a younger, less freckled Addie, with just as much attitude and personality as her larger self.

Life was pretty good.

 _ **And that's a wrap! I hope you guys liked it. Remember, please feel free to leave a review about whatever you think. Next up: we introduce a new friend and fight an epic enemy. I can't give you guys a solid idea on when I'll update next (because by now you know I stink at deadlines), but I'll try to be a little quicker. With that in mind, catch you guys later!**_


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